Eto Otitigbe

2014 - 2015 Elizabeth M. Marion Visiting Artist and Scholar

Eto Otitigbe is polymedia artist whose practice includes sculpture, performance, and installation to investigate issues of race, technology, politics, and human interaction. His work is charged with current political subject matter such as the over-engineering of society’s basic needs like food and water. Otitigbe’s art can be experienced as type of a creative protest, a cultural artifact, or a radical sculptural environment.

Otitigbe places his art in dialogue with itself by extracting still images from videos and turning them into digital prints; or transforming two-dimensional graphics into sculptural reliefs. Eto Otitigbe was born in the northern corner of New York State to parents from Nigeria’s Delta Region. He has lived across the United States, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. Otitigbe studied Mechanical Engineering at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts (BS, 1999) and Stanford University, Palo Alto, California (MS, 2003).

He earned an MFA in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute (2012). In 2013 he participated in the Bronx Museum’s AIM Residency program and biennial. Otitigbe lives and works between Austin, Texas and Brooklyn, New York.

“Personally, I consider myself an open system in constant flux, influenced by the places I lived in and the people I have met. Hence my creative practice is a negotiation between the various polar regions of my identity: Nigerian-Artist-American-Engineer-DJ-Designer, to name a few. So to my work has many historical, cultural and political influences but I use innovative materials and fabrication techniques to represent these themes in a contemporary way.” www.etootitigbe.com look@etotitigbe.com

Mr. Otitigbe is collaborating with the Wideman/Davis Dance Company at USC in the creation of a piece that will premier as part of “Our Journey Forward” at the Koger Center for the Arts on April 12, 2015.