Onyeka Igwe is a London born & based moving image artist and researcher. Her work is aimed at the question: how do we live together? Not to provide a rigid answer as such, but to pull apart the nuances of mutuality and co-existence in our deeply individualized world. Onyeka’s practice figures sensorial, spatial and counter-hegemonic ways of knowing as central to that task. She is interested in the prosaic and everyday aspects of black livingness. For her, the body, archives and narratives both oral and textual act as a mode of enquiry that makes possible the exposition of overlooked histories . 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 Modern Mondays, MoMA, 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; Open City Documentary Film Festival 2021 and 2022, 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.
Onyeka’s video works have been screened at Modern Mondays, MoMA, 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; Open City Documentary Film Festival 2021 and 2022, 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 history is a living weapon in yr hand, Bonington Gallery and Peer, UK, 2024, A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver), MoMA PS1, New York, 2023, 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 Nigeria Imaginary, 60th Venice Biennale, 2024, Lagos Peckham Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes, South London Gallery, London, 2023, 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 an upcoming solo exhibition at Tate Britain in September 2025.
She was nominated for the 2022 Jarman Award, MaxMara Artist Prize for Women 2022-24, 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. She is represented by Arcadia Missa.
CV (Web – PDF)
Recent group exhibitions include Nigeria Imaginary, 60th Venice Biennale, 2024, Lagos Peckham Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes, South London Gallery, London, 2023, 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 an upcoming solo exhibition at Tate Britain in September 2025.
She was nominated for the 2022 Jarman Award, MaxMara Artist Prize for Women 2022-24, 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. She is represented by Arcadia Missa.
CV (Web – PDF)