Whitney Biennial 2022:
Quiet as It’s Kept
Apr 6–Oct 16, 2022
Woody De Othello
44
Floor 5
Born 1991 in Miami, FL
Lives in Oakland, CA
Describing these sculptures, Woody De Othello has said: “I’m inspired by precolonial ceramics, but I don’t want to regurgitate them. I want to embody them and make them apply to my personal experience.” Building the forms from clay coils, he makes sculptures reimagining the human body and domestic objects. Acknowledging the feelings of exhaustion that have accompanied the pandemic and the reality of living, Othello has suggested that this work points to a place of guarded optimism: “I think about ideas of self-preservation and self-care. We’re inundated with trauma and bombarded by the bad news in the media, things happening in life. These sculptures want to put themselves out there emotionally but also want to protect themselves.”
Study for The will to make things happen, 2021
Woody De Othello, The will to make things happen, 2021 (installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). Ceramic, glaze, and bronze on ceramic-tiled plinth. Collection of the artist; courtesy the artist; Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; and Karma, New York. Photograph by Ron Amstutz