Onyeka Igwe is a London born and based moving image artist and researcher working across cinema and installation. This In Focus presents a selection of moving-image works produced between 2015 and 2025, alongside a curated programme of artist films and videos made for British television, as well as a participatory performance workshop. 

Notes on dancing with the archive, UK 2023, 1 min
In this short animation, stick figures act out the polyrhythmic dance notation developed by Nigerian playwright and choreographer Felix A. Akinsipe. 
 
We Need New Names, UK 2015, 14 mins
“An essay video work examining contemporary Nigerian diasporic female identity through the contradictions inherent to an ethnographic reading of the funeral of the filmmaker’s family matriarch. Using personal archive to explore the concepts of female identity, diaspora, cultural memory and most importantly ‘fiction’.” (Onyeka Igwe) 

Her Name in My Mouth, UK 2017, 6 mins
Her Name in My Mouth is the first work in the series No Dance, No Palaver, a trilogy of films developed through Igwe’s research into the Aba Women's War of 1929, considered the first major challenge to British authority in West Africa during the colonial period and a historic example of feminist protest. Structured around repurposed material filmed by the Colonial Film Unit, the work reconsiders the Aba Women’s War through embodiment, gesture and the archive.  

Another Step Forward, UK 2020, 6 mins
“Words and phrases from Nnamdi Azikiwe’s inaugural address – on the occasion of Nigeria’s independence in 1960 – drift, emerge, ricochet and tremble in this spatial sound work.” (Onyeka Igwe) 
 
8 yams, 8 small yams, 8 eggs, a cow and a cockerel, UK 2021, 4 mins
“He brought out the cow and the eight chicken eggs and one white cock and eight large yams and eight small yams, and told Igwe to take these things and give them to the people of his town so that he and they could hold the ritual eating together, in order to reconcile them from that day forward.” Omenuko, Pita Nwana (1933) 

“Part of a long-term research project ‘A Chorus of Shame' which investigates traditions and practices of reparation across time and geography that emanate from the law, the land and the body, ultimately asking the question, what are the Other ways reconciliation has been sought and reparations paid? This short film explores ritual eating practices in West Africa” (Onyeka Igwe) 

A Radical Duet, UK 2023, 29 mins
In 1947 London was a hub of radical anti-colonial activity, with international intellectuals, artists and activists agitating for their respective countries’ national independence. Onyeka Igwe’s A Radical Duet is a short narrative film that imagines “what happened when two women of different generations, both part of the post-war independence movement, came together in London to put their fervour and imagination to writing a revolutionary play” (Onyeka Igwe). 

Followed by a Q&A with Onyeka Igwe.