Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects: curated by Sequoia Miller and Magdalene Odundo

Captivating viewers from the threshold of the third-floor gallery of the Gardiner Museum, Magdalene Odundo’s ceramic works were on brilliant display in Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects, the artist’s Canadian debut and largest North American survey to date. Odundo is renowned for the sleek, burnished, and carbonized clay vessels she makes by hand. Evocative of the female form, with their twisting necks, bulbous bellies, bell mouths, nipples, and buttons, her sculptures range in hues of warm ochre and glistening black (Fig. 1). In the exhibition, each vessel was displayed in its own enclosed glass vitrine, inviting audiences to spend time observing the subtle singularities of each work. The comprehensive scope of the exhibition, with twenty-one vessels dating from 1984 to 2022, deftly showcased Odundo’s skill and commitment to clay as the scale, quality of the finish, and essential style of her sculptures was remarkably consistent across nearly four decades. Sixteen of the works were presented atop two massive open circle plinths that took up the central footprint of the gallery (Fig. 2). Echoing the form and conceit of her sculptures through their simplified shape and emphasis on interior space, the plinth’s architectural presence prompted audiences to amble in and around the vessels, encouraging an embodied engagement and space for contemplation. The plinths’ metallic charcoal hue and texture, along with the clay-toned walls of the gallery were also a fine compliment to the material of Odundo’s practice. The exhibition’s innovative design is credited to the Studio of Contemporary Architecture (SOCA): Tura Cousins Wilson and Shane Laptiste.Amidst the field of contemporary art Odundo’s sculptures are unique as they are steadfast in their defiance of any art historical category. Her works appear as functional wares but are also contemporary sculpture; they suggest tradition and modernity—and the uniqueness of this was ever present when seeing so many of her works together in a dynamic display. On view along the perimeter of the gallery walls was a wide array of paintings, sculptures, and material culture from private collections and institutions, including the Gardiner Museum (Fig. 3). As a curatorial strategy, the exhibition’s inclusion of a broad collection of art sought to highlight the transcultural influences and affinities that Odundo sees between her sculptures and numerous other works of art. Odundo has employed this approach in previous exhibitions such as Magdalene Odundo in Cambridge at the Fitzwilliam Museum (2021) and Magdalene Odundo: The Journey of Things at the Sainsbury Centre, UK and The Hepworth Wakefield, UK (2019).Born and raised in Kenya, Odundo acquired much of her tertiary education in the UK, where she currently resides. She held formative apprenticeships in Nigeria and Kenya, where she learned hand-building techniques, travelled to New Mexico to study the creation of black ware vessels; she has also held countless residences and has researched ceramic traditions through a range of museum collections. A work on view that pointed to this educational history was a 1963 pot by the famed Gbagyi potter Ladi Kwali, under whom Odundo studied at The Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, Nigeria (Fig. 4). Aside from Kwali’s vessel and Odundo’s figurative print and sketches, most of the works on the walls of the gallery held a looser connection to her practice (Fig. 5). An example of the range of works on view include a Greek Parian marble Female Votive Figure ca. 2300-2200 bce, Josef Albers painting Homage to the Square (1967), and Oluseye’s readymade sculpture Ploughing Liberty (2021). The arrangement of Odundo’s works in the center of the room and the stunning case design did much to amplify the beauty of her vessels, yet the affinities between her work and the surrounding objects felt conceptually and physically distant (Fig. 6). This distance impacts the dialogue between Odundo’s pieces and the works by other artists. Centering her practice and placing other makers—from a range of regions and time periods—on the periphery compels visitors to engage each artwork separate from the others.In addition to inviting viewers to appreciate the aesthetics of Odundo’s sculptures, their resonance with the human form and her works relation to a diverse set of art practices and material culture, the show also charted new ground in the framing of Odundo’s work. The exhibition wall text encouraged audiences to see her synthesizing of artistic influences as an anti-colonial approach to making, as unlike museums and art history she does not ascribe hierarchical value upon a genre or style of art but freely looks to creative practices from across time and cultures. Furthermore, the exhibition brochure offered insight on Odundo’s process of using small tools and sculpting clay by hand, her penchant for prioritizing the interior shape before building the surface, her pinch-and-pull method to add layers, and the burnishing and firing of clay to achieve the colour and lustre of each sculpture. A video in the gallery that explicitly modeled her techniques and how her process of making builds equitable, nonextractive relations with materials, artists, and the stewards of cultural practices that inspire her would have helped bolster the anticolonial positioning of her practice. The exhibition catalogue may have been viewed as the more suitable format to elaborate upon these ideas. Released after the exhibition in fall 2024, edited by curator Sequoia Miller and published by the Gardiner Museum in association with Princeton University Press, the 128-page hardcover catalogue includes contributions by Nehal El-Hadi, Elizabeth Harney, Susan Jefferies and Barbara Thompson.Most compelling in sparking a dialogue between Odundo’s sculptures and a wide array of artistic practices was the robust suite of programs that included live music, lectures, spoken word, and gallery tours featuring Toronto-based artists and scholars like Professor Christina Sharpe, poet Matin Gomes, and musician Kobèna Aquaa-Harrison, to name a few. Also, complementing the last few months of Odundo’s show was the first-floor lobby exhibition Geneaologies of Sustenance. Organized by Sarah Edo, the museum’s former curatorial resident, the exhibition featured works produced from and reflecting on clay by younger black diasporic artists: Chiedza Pasipanodya, Mallory Low Mpoka and Zainab Aliyu.The Gardiner is Canada’s preeminent museum dedicated to ceramic arts. Founded in 1984 by George and Helen Gardiner who were avid collectors of European porcelain and ancient American ceramics, the collection’s geographic and temporal purview have greatly expanded. Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, the Gardiner has long had a dynamic program of local and international artists, public programs, hands-on studio ceramic classes, and free Wednesday nights—yet it is safe to say that Odundo’s exhibition and its related programming infused Toronto’s Black diasporic community with a renewed interest in the space (Fig. 7). Seeing Odundo’s works, a new generation of artists also committed to the value and beauty of clay as a medium in Geneaologies of Sustenance, and audience enthusiasm makes evident the importance of clay for contemporary art, African and Afro-diasporic communities today.