Onyeka Igwe
Emily Wardill and the Studio of Art | Film invite Onyeka Igwe to give an artist talk as part of the IBK Lecture Series.
Onyeka Igwe is a London-born and based moving image artist and researcher. Her work is aimed at the question: how do we live together? Not to provide a rigid answer, but to pull apart the nuances of mutuality and co-existence in our deeply individualized world. Igwe's practice centres sensorial, spatial and counter-hegemonic ways of knowing. She is interested in the prosaic and everyday aspects of black livingness, drawing on the body, archives, and oral and textual narratives as modes of enquiry that expose overlooked histories. The work comprises untying strands and threads, anchored by a rhythmic editing style and close attention to the dissonance, reflection and amplification between image and sound.
Onyeka's video works have been screened at MoMA, ICA London, Dhaka Art Summit, and at film festivals internationally including the London Film Festival, Open City Documentary Film Festival, Rotterdam International, Images Festival Canada, and the Smithsonian African American Film Festival. Solo exhibitions include our generous mother, Tate Britain, 2025; history is a living weapon in yr hand, Bonington Gallery and Peer, 2024; A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver), MoMA PS1, New York, 2023; and The Miracle on George Green, The High Line, New York, 2022, among others. Recent group exhibitions include Nigeria Imaginary, 60th Venice Biennale, 2024; Lagos Peckham Repeat, South London Gallery, 2023; and Echoes, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2022.
Onyeka has a solo exhibition at Secession, Vienna currently on view.