Onyeka Igwe’s Art Now display, our generous mother, explores the University of Ibadan, the oldest degree-awarding institution in Nigeria. Moving through the university’s tropical modernist architecture, the film traces the building’s personal and political histories, from its colonial roots through to national independence, civil war and towards the present day.
Visitors will enter a dark green space which hosts the film in multiple guises. It first takes the form of a Perspex sculpture that fractures the content, alluding to the multiple ways one place can be understood. Towards the middle of the space, the work takes the form of a slide projection. At the back of the gallery, the film then concludes in digital form, projected upon a large cinematic wall.
Across all these different iterations of her work, Igwe draws from her own interest in radical filmmaking to deconstruct the history of the University of Ibadan.
Read an essay on Igwe's work, our mother's peculiar mess by Xavier Alexandre Pillai.
Art Now: Onyeka Igwe is supported by the Bukhman Foundation. With additional support from the Art Now Supporters Circle and Tate Americas Foundation.
Onyeka Igwe was born in London, where she continues to live and work. Her work has been the subject of recent exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York, Bonington Gallery in Nottingham and Peer in London. She has also been included in group exhibitions at venues including Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, South London Gallery, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw and Haus der Kunst in Munich, as well as at the Lagos Biennial and in the Nigerian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, and at numerous film festivals around the world.
There are low light levels in this exhibition.
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