A Quote by Toyin Odutola
For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not.
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For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not. With "Of Another Kind," I've not so much drawn nudes - I hate saying "nudes" because it's not a spectacle - but portrayed people naked. I see them in a more straightforward way - exposed, but with no indication of who or what they are; they're just there.
In assembling this group of portraits of women, I'm aware that I'm treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men's depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand's book Women Are Beautiful in the school library and being shocked that it hadn't been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest.
No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others whether he intends to or not, whether he is conscious of it or not.
I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.
When you have been writing for a lot of years, you have to make an effort not to start repeating yourself. It occurred to me that I tended to tread certain ground automatically, because it was comfortable, but that there were areas I avoided automatically because they made me nervous.
While education is hugely important, the ways in which women are portrayed in their communities are equally important. Portraying women as victims keeps women in a captive space and denies them of their agency: their ability to fight back and take ownership of their situation.
A photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.
The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at and marketed to us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.
The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing.
I feel a lot of hip-hop videos are all about portraying a lifestyle that the artist doesn't even live.
The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.
While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.
Within the media, the way that women are portrayed - especially young women - sometimes there is a lot of sexual objectification and, I would say, 'lad culture.' These are all things that connect with domestic abuse.
Why was the painting made? What ideas of the artist can we sense? Can the personality and sensitivity of the artist be felt when studying the work? What is the artist telling us about his or her feelings about the subject? What response do I get from the message of the artist? Do I know the artist better because of the painting?
One thing I've always been concerned about is the objectification of women in ads, and that's one thing where I was like, 'Well, if I become a part of advertising, I could change that.'
It's wonderful that we're portraying women in this way so that young women can see that women actually are strong and capable of accomplishing all kinds of things.
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