East, London
Onyeka Igwe
History Is a Living Weapon in Yr Hand
PeerHistory Is a Living Weapon in Yr Hand is a solo exhibition of new work by london-based artist Onyeka Igwe. Igwe’s exhibition is comprised of the two-screen installation, A Radical Duet (2023), along with an installation of paraphernalia, props and production materials. The exhibition takes London in 1947 as its starting point. At this time, London was a hub of radical anti-colonial activity with artists, activists and intellectuals Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Sylvia Wynter, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore all spending time in the city. The exhibition’s centrepiece, A Radical Duet (2023) imagines figures from this milieu meeting and coming together to discuss the end of British colonialism. In Igwe’s film, two women, both fighting for independence but from different generations, decide to put their fervour and imagination into writing a revolutionary play. The film depicts this process, and envisages what that play would look like, if staged today. Spilling out of Peer’s two galleries, Igwe’s exhibition makes use of Peer’s 8 metre-wide street-facing windows and areas at Peer not usually open to the public, such as a Peer’s studio space, store-room and corridors. Visitors are invited to move through different layers of artifice from a street facing vitrine ‘advertising’ the fictional play, to the two-screen moving image work installed in Peer’s galleries, to backstage spaces where rehearsal materials, costumes and discarded props blur with the day-to-day workings of the gallery. A series of talks, events and workshops has been programmed in collaboration with the MA Curating and Collection at Chelsea and runs throughout the exhibition. Igwe’s exhibition is part of Peer’s 2024 Programme, which also includes new commissions and exhibitions by artists Ed Webb-Ingall and Meera Shakti Osborne. Onyeka Igwe is a London born & based moving image artist and researcher. Her work is aimed at the question: how do we live together? Recent solo exhibitions include 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 and a so-called archive, LUX, London, UK. Recent group exhibitions include Nigeria Imaginary, Venice Biennale, Italy, 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. Igwe's work is distributed by LUX and argos. She is represented by Arcadia Missa. history is a living weapon in yr hand is supported by Arts Council England and Headline Supporter, Mandy El Sayegh. The public programme for history is a living weapon in yr hand is supported by the MA Curating and Collections, Chelsea College of Arts. history is a living weapon in yr hand is produced in collaboration with Bonington Gallery, where it opened on 13 January 2024. A Radical Duet was commissioned by Flamin Productions through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network with funding from Arts Council England. Additional funding from June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive, and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities Cultural Programme.