Achi news desk-
“I was good at fighting but bad at school,” said 24-year-old multidisciplinary artist from Toronto, Ehiko Odeh, describing her first year in Canada back in 2015.
Odeh grew up in Nigeria, in the Surulere neighborhood of Lagos. Just before starting her last year of high school, she moved to Hamilton, Ont.
“I wasn’t happy to come [to Canada],” she said. “I was [already] experiencing anxiety back home. I didn’t know what it was until I moved here, and it didn’t get any better.”
She was a world away from her family, worried about her mother’s safety due to the political and economic climate in Nigeria, and struggling to adapt to her new environment. But her art class felt like a lifeline. In 2016, she saw a presentation by a representative from the University of Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) – she was one of only two students who came to the talk – and quickly “fell in love” with the idea of an art school .
Odeh was accepted to OCAD, but it didn’t solve all his problems. She lived in a rented flat that she couldn’t work in, and often couldn’t sleep in because it was too cold. She continued to struggle with her mental health and self-harm, while working as a dishwasher.
Odeh would often sleep in the OCAD student lounge on the second floor, or in the painting studio on the fourth floor. But in a course taught by Linda Martino, she was given an assignment that changed things for her: she was asked to create art that felt like home.
“The first thing that came to my mind was my mother doing my hair,” she said. “It evolved into exploring local hair salons back home in Lagos, Nigeria.”
Later, he took a creative writing course with a Black Canadian poet Lillian Allen.
“She’s a great teacher and she took me in,” Odeh said. Allen even gave the young artist a space heater for his frigid apartment. “She felt like the godmother I needed, as I was in a city where I didn’t know anyone. Lillian gave me the community I have now.”
Through Allen he met Karen Carter, co-founder and director of Black Artists’ Networks in Dialogue Gallery & Cultural Center (BAND).
“The very first [hair] The piece I made was on cardboard, because I couldn’t afford to buy canvas at the time,” said Odeh.
Carter was delighted. In June 2019, Odeh took part in her very first exhibition entitled Ochu’lu O’oya-Celebration Ceremony in BAND.
“Hair became more of an interest to me,” Odeh said. “That’s how the series started.”
For DesignTO 2024, Odeh created the Gold Beauty Supplyinteractive exhibition in conjunction with MCA Gallery and grassroots creative agency For free to honor the legacy of Golden’s West Indian Barber & Beauty Supply Corporation, or Golden’s for short, at 860 Bathurst St. The store served Black communities in Toronto for decades. It is still open, but the landlord has put the property up for sale.
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“In the beginning, [my art] about memory and nostalgia,” said Odeh, who had a solo exhibition called Our Hair Holds Memory in BAND in 2023. He played with bright colors and acrylic paint then. Now she explores more with oil paint, oil pastels and collage elements. She thinks that research is an important part of her artistic process.
“Being online can only give me so much,” Odeh said.
He finds himself in libraries, visiting hair salons in different areas to ask questions to hairdressers and their clients, or to take pictures of their workplaces. This also led to combing through another section of hair care history.
“The more I learned about the ingredients, I really wanted to highlight that more in my work,” he says. “I want people to be aware of who is in charge of these [hair product] companies. Be aware of where your money is going. Money is power.”
Back in Nigeria, Odeh often sat between her mother’s legs to do her hair. Today, she wonders why American products like Blue Magic and Cantu were so present in her childhood, even though she didn’t own a Black.
“It was very interesting how these products were strategically marketed to us, and not made by us,” Odeh said. “I was curious about their ingredients and the side effects of these chemicals when they are used long term.”
Products such as the Dark & Lovely hair relaxer are facing lawsuits in the US for their negative effects on long-term users. But their popularity in African countries continues to grow, although in October 2022 the United States National Institutes of Health They found that women who use those hair relaxers more often are at a higher risk of developing uterine cancer.
“I want to work with a pharmacist to learn more about the ingredients of these products,” and, he added, to offer better alternatives. Odeh says his goal is not to be famous.
“It’s about having real connections and building relationships with people who inspire my work, people who do hair, like my mother, my community. Those are the people I do work for.”
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