What It Becomes

This work is from Toyin Ojih Odutola’s series The Treatment, a group of more than forty drawings of famous white men, ranging from politicians and actors to artists and musicians. Angered by the way young Black men are repeatedly stereotyped in the media rather than portrayed as individuals, Ojih Odutola describes The Treatment as a study of how Blackness is often seen as “an obfuscating element that obstructs anything that’s behind.” Working with images found online, she rendered her subjects’ skin in dense, sinewy passages of black ballpoint pen and chose not to reveal their identities, testing how this treatment would affect their recognizability and perception.