Odili Donald Odita is a comprehensive monograph of the artist’s work – spanning from his early mixed media collages from the early 1990’s – to his latest three dimensional painting installations and more. Odita’s vibrant abstract paintings blur the borderlines of American, African, and Western European traditions of abstract paintings. The book emphasizes the political and aesthetic importance of Odili’s visually astounding paintings and installations by presenting them alongside a trove of accompanying visual materials – including images from photographic archives he has collected, drawings, installations, and geometric studies. Inspired both by African and American Design, the book mixes his paintings with a trove of materials from the ‘Black Album’, a collection of ads, photographs, and media clippings related to race and Black American culture that he has been collecting for years. This intermixing contextualizes Odita’s abstract expressionism within a political context of struggle, race, and diaspora, resulting in a timely meditation on race in America.
Published in 2023 by Sternthal Books.
Hardcover, full-color illustrations
| 408 p, ills colour & bw, 23 x 30 cm, hb, English |