“Skin is a place we inhabit and have to mitigate while moving through the world,” explains Nigerian-born, Alabama-raised artist Ojih Odutola, who created Birmingham at the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico. In this work, a triptych of portraits based on photographs of her brother, skin becomes an intricate topography of furrows, curves, and contours, an all-encompassing environment that shapes and defines the figure’s presence in space. Touches of gold leaf on her brother’s undershirt lend a sense of grandeur, while the dense, saturated black inks emphasize the individuality of his features. “I want the skin to feel alive and distinctive for each character,” Ojih Odutola declares. “Skin . . . is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness.” Presented together, the three portraits enliven her brother’s figure, which seems to rotate in the spaces between images. His body is dynamic, fluid, and open-ended, irreducible to a single image.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)