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Artist Talk Onyeka Igwe + Screening ‘Ungentle’
Onyeka Igwe (b. 1986, London, UK), lives in London
London-born artist and researcher Onyeka Igwe is working mainly with moving-image. Her work is aimed at the question: How do we live together? She is interested in the prosaic and everyday aspects of black livingness and the exposure of overlooked histories. She had solo/duo shows at MoMA PS1 (New York, 2023), High Line (New York, 2022), S-L-I-C-E (Berlin, 2022), Mercer Union (Toronto, 2021), LUX (London, 2021), Jerwood Arts (London, 2019) and Trinity Square Video (Toronto, 2018). Her films were screened in numerous groups shows and film festivals worldwide. Currently, she is Practitioner in Residence at the University of the Arts London. She will participate in the group show ‘Nigeria Imaginary’ in the national pavilion of Nigeria at the upcoming 60th Venice Biennial in 2024. The artist is represented by Arcadia Missa (London).
Picture by Marissa Alper / MoMA PS1
Right after the Artist Talk, there will be a screening of the film Igwe made together with Woonhuis Fellow Huw Lemmey.
Ungentle is a film commissioned by Huw Lemmey, and co–directed with Onyeka Igwe (2022)
35 min, shot on 16mm
Ungentle explores the complicated relationship between British espionage and male homosexuality. Based on extensive historical research, the film is narrated by an imagined, enigmatic author whose fraught position as both a spy and gay man in the mid–20th century is troubled by sex, secrecy, politics and imperialism. The film edges at a fluidity and an atmosphere of unknowability, where the protagonist directs the scenes of the film from outside the camera lens. Lemmey and Igwe employ the expansive potential of the artist film, using the fictional and factual to challenge the nature of authorship and agency.
The screening is free of charge for visitors of the Artist Talk.
