Photo by Yasmine Akim
Somerset House Studios resident

Onyeka Igwe

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation, born and based in London, UK.

Somerset House Studios
New Wing

Through her work, Onyeka Igwe is animated by the question — how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatial and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers to this question. She uses embodiment, archives, narration and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a form 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. Her works have been shown in the UK and internationally at film festivals and galleries. She was awarded the New Cinema Award at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 2019 and the 2020 Arts Foundation Fellowship Award for Experimental Film.

One + The Other, Camden Arts Centre, 2021. Photo Nelta Kasprian.jpg

One + The Other, Camden Arts Centre, 2021. Photo Nelta Kasprian
One + The Other, Camden Arts Centre, 2021. Photo Nelta Kasprian

During her residency she will be working on an experimental dual timeline feature film about 1940s Pan Africanist London for FLAMIN Productions.

a so-called archive (Trailer)

The real story is what's in that room, Mercer Union 2021. Photo Mercer Union.jpg

The real story is what's in that room, Mercer Union 2021. Photo Mercer Union
The real story is what's in that room, Mercer Union 2021. Photo Mercer Union