Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She is born and based in London, UK.
Through her work, Onyeka is animated by the question — how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatiality, and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. The work comprises untying strands and threads, anchored by a rhythmic editing style, as well as close attention to the dissonance, reflection and amplification that occurs between image and sound.
Onyeka’s video works have been screened at Artists’ Film Club: Black Radical Imagination, ICA, London, 2017; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, 2020, and at film festivals internationally including the London Film Festival, 2015 and 2020; Rotterdam International, Netherlands, 2018, 2019 and 2020; Edinburgh Artist Moving Image, 2016; Images Festival, Canada, 2019, and the Smithsonian African American film festival, USA, 2018.
Through her work, Onyeka is animated by the question — how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatiality, and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. The work comprises untying strands and threads, anchored by a rhythmic editing style, as well as close attention to the dissonance, reflection and amplification that occurs between image and sound.
Onyeka’s video works have been screened at Artists’ Film Club: Black Radical Imagination, ICA, London, 2017; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, 2020, and at film festivals internationally including the London Film Festival, 2015 and 2020; Rotterdam International, Netherlands, 2018, 2019 and 2020; Edinburgh Artist Moving Image, 2016; Images Festival, Canada, 2019, and the Smithsonian African American film festival, USA, 2018.
Solo exhibitions include The Miracle on George Green,
The High Line, New York, USA, 2022, a so-called archive, LUX, London, UK and THE REAL STORY IS
WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM, Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada, 2021, There
Were Two Brothers, Jerwood Arts, 2019, and Corrections, with
Aliya Pabani, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada, 2018.
Recent group exhibitions include Echoes, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2022, Reconfigured, Timothy Taylor New York, USA, 2021; Archives of Resistance, Neue Galerie, Innsbruck, Austria, 2021; KW Production Series, Berlin, Germany, 2020; New Labor Movements, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, USA; [POST] Colonial Bodies II, CC Matienzo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2019; there’s something in the conversation that is more interesting than the finality of (a title), The Showroom, London, UK, 2018; and World Cup!, articule, Montreal, Canada, 2018.
Onyeka has forthcoming commissions with The Common Guild, FLAMIN Productions and has an upcoming solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in March 2023.
She was nominated for the 2022 Jarman Award, MaxMara Artist Prize for Women 22-24, awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize, 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film and was the recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.
Onyeka's work is distributed by LUX and argos.
CV (Web – PDF)
Recent group exhibitions include Echoes, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2022, Reconfigured, Timothy Taylor New York, USA, 2021; Archives of Resistance, Neue Galerie, Innsbruck, Austria, 2021; KW Production Series, Berlin, Germany, 2020; New Labor Movements, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, USA; [POST] Colonial Bodies II, CC Matienzo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2019; there’s something in the conversation that is more interesting than the finality of (a title), The Showroom, London, UK, 2018; and World Cup!, articule, Montreal, Canada, 2018.
Onyeka has forthcoming commissions with The Common Guild, FLAMIN Productions and has an upcoming solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in March 2023.
She was nominated for the 2022 Jarman Award, MaxMara Artist Prize for Women 22-24, awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize, 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film and was the recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.
Onyeka's work is distributed by LUX and argos.
CV (Web – PDF)