Joshua Oduga is a first-generation Nigerian American interdisciplinary artist, curator, gallery director, and writer based in Los Angeles. His curatorial work and writing are focused on archives, alternative histories, and oral and musical traditions. He has curated and organized exhibitions and programs with Art + Practice, the Hammer Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Various Small Fires, Jeffery Deitch Gallery, and PAM.

In 2022 he co-founded Central Server Works with Rachael Oduga as an art gallery, publishing house, and film/theater production company. Since 2022 CSW has staged 17 exhibitions in Los Angeles and Paris, published 3 artists’ monographs, produced an immersive dance production, and are currently in production on a short film starring puppets.

Oduga’s writing has been published by X-Artists Books, The Getty Research Institute, Center Theatre Group, and Hyperallergic where he writes freelance articles focused on fringe aspects of the Los Angeles creative economy. He has received fellowships from Center Theatre Group, Areaware, and Emerging Arts Leaders Los Angeles.

He is a current dual degree candidate at Claremont Graduate University in the MFA and MA Arts Management Programs where he received the 2024 Friedman Grant for the creation of his debut short film Keserves = Laments.

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E-mail contact: joshuaoduga @ gmail.com

Current Studio Locations:

Pico Robertson Neighborhood | Los Angeles, CA - 500 sq ft. audio/video print production studio.

Equipment List Upon Request

Studio Mailing Address:

517 Victoria Ave

Venice CA, 90291

MFA Studio | Claremont, CA - 300 sq ft interdisciplinary studio.

Equipment List Upon Request

NEWS

June 11, 2024: I have been awarded a 2024 Friedman Grant by The Claremont Graduate University School of Arts and Humanities. The grant will go toward my film project Keserves = Laments.

Keserves = Laments is an experiential autofiction film shot on 35mm and digital video. Alongside the project, I will create medium-format photography and a score composed of analog synthesizers. Using auto fiction as source material the film meditates on ideas of utopia, sustainability, and practical living through the lens of first-generation American blackness. The work proposes questions about creating African-American social space through a fictionalized story of an archivist struggling with a psychosocial mental health issue while recording a series of remote correspondences. Taking its name from a composition by Anthony Braxton the film uses free jazz as a stylistic guide.

More information on the 2024 Friedman Grant can be found here.