Magdalene Odundo

Book excerpt: A beautifully illustrated look at how the acclaimed ceramicist draws on the postcolonial experience in her work Magdalene Odundo (b. 1950) is a Kenyan-born British ceramicist whose extraordinary works have been widely celebrated for their beauty and universality. Her studies of classical forms across many global traditions—from Greek and Chinese to Aztec and African—are evident in her intimate, evocative shapes. Sequoia Miller sheds light on the colonial and material traditions that inform Odundo's ceramics, showing how the artist deftly blends cultural and ethnographic sources to give expression to the postcolonial experience. This beautifully illustrated book discusses Odundo’s innovative method and puts her ceramic forms into conversation with global contemporary art. This close examination allows for a careful look at the artist’s works on paper—her prints and sketchbook drawings, published here in depth for the first time—demonstrating how they are a fundamental aspect of her creative practice. The book also features an in-depth Q&A with Odundo, in which she shares rare insights into her sense of self as an artist. With an incisive foreword by Susan Jefferies and illuminating contributions by Nehal El-Hadi, Elizabeth Harney, and Barbara Thompson, Magdalene Odundo provides new perspectives on an incomparable artist of our time, revealing the profound complexities of her work while deepening our understanding of modernism more broadly. Published in association with the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto