Onyeka Igwe

Onyeka Igwe (b. 1996, London) is an artist-filmmaker based in London. In her non-fiction video work, Igwe uses dance, voice, archives, sound design and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. The work comprises untieable 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.

Igwe has recently completed a practice based PhD researching colonial moving images, their reproduction and enduring impact on the present. She has been published in MIRAJ, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media and The Feminist Review. 

Solo exhibitions include ‘history is a living weapon in yr hand’, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham and Peer Gallery, London (2024); ‘A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver)’, MoMA PS1, New York, (2023); ‘The Miracle on George Green’, The High Line, New York (2022); ‘a so-called archive’, LUX, London (2201); ‘THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM’, Mercer Union, Toronto (2021); ‘There Were Two Brothers’, Jerwood Arts (2019); ‘Corrections’ (with Aliya Pabani), Trinity Square Video, Toronto (2018). Igwe’s pieces have featured in group exhibitions at South London Gallery, London, 2023; Haus der Kunst, Munich (2022); Timothy Taylor, New York (2021); Neue Galerie, Innsbruck (2021); KW Production Series, Berlin (2020); McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco (2019); CC Matienzo, Buenos Aires (2019); The Showroom, London (2018); articule, Montreal (2018).

Her 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 (2018) . Igwe was nominated for the Jarman Award (2022), MaxMara Artist Prize for Women (2022-24). She was awarded the Foundwork Artist Prize (2021), Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film (2020) and was the recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award (2019).

Onyeka Igwe is represented by Arcadia Missa.