Woody De Othello

Woody De Othello (b. 1991, Miami) works primarily in clay and bronze, manipulating mundane objects such as clocks, calendars, phones, and box fans to transform them into warped, uncanny repositories of psychic significance. This approach builds on the West and Central African concept of nkisi, in which objects contain and release spiritual forces; for Othello, each work is a vessel, even when it is physically sealed. His two-dimensional works also present surrealistic distortions of scale and temporality, invoking the familiar but confounding legibility. He lives in Oakland, California.

Recent institutional solo exhibitions include coming forth by day, currently on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (2021–22) and San José Museum of Art, California (2019). His work was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It’s Kept. Othello’s work is represented in the collections of the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Baltimore Museum of Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Dallas Museum of Art; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Rennie Museum, Vancouver; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San José Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.