Video document in collection of the Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland. O. Donald Odita New York artist Donald Odita makes images from images, and his images are about images, about the construction of types and identities especially from outside the provenances defined and ultimately inhibited or disadvantaged by such images. Raised in the twilight of the great American surburbian age, Odita grew up with television and the screen, and the world he recalls and submits to critical examination is in large part outlined by the screen. With the recent abolishment of checks against the institutionalisation of this segregation in the State of California, Odita's work, though dealing with questions in a less specific and much larger, historical realm, becomes even more relevant. In the following statement, the artist explains his work, and the contexts of its making.
Pictures are a deep reservoir for cultural ideals as well as cultural dogmas.
I find pictures to speak from my position as an African living within a particular cultural framework called America. I look into this culture's many means of communication, via media, to deconstruct pictures within the frame of race, and equally so, gender. Not that I think a person cannot be unique, or not have uniqueness as a picture or a photocopy might suggest, rather, in general society one looses this uniqueness living amongst the production of technological experimentation. Photocopying, as an activity, emphasizes and reinforces the idea of distance from an original and a beginning in its nature of producing consecutive generations of the same. The photocopy exists as the output of this mechanized process where value becomes minimal and quantity supersedes the singular.