Onyeka Igwe, Her Name in My Mouth 2017, video stills, photo credit: Onyeka Igwe
Onyeka Igwe, Her Name in My Mouth 2017, video stills, photo credit: Onyeka Igwe
Onyeka Igwe, the walls have mouths, installation view, Timothy Taylor, New York, USA, 29 April – 12 June 2021, photo credit: Lance Brewer
Courtesy of the artist
Born London, UK (1986), lives and works in London, UK
Her Name in My Mouth (No Dance No Palaver) 2017
video, sound, colour, 6.02 mins
Courtesy of the artist
the walls have mouths 2021
video, sound, colour, 5.02 mins
Courtesy of the artist
The production of this ‘the walls have mouths’ was commissioned by Tyneside Cinema as part of the artists’ programme Projections and produced in association with the KW Production Series, a co-production by julia Stoschek Collection and Outset Contemporary Art Fund.
Supported through public funding by Arts Council England
Artist’s statement
Invoking a lineage of female ancestors through embodiment, gesture and the archive, Her Name in My Mouth (No Dance No Palaver) reimagines the Aba Women’s War, a major anti-colonial uprising in Nigeria.
The former Nigerian Film Unit building was one of the first self-directed outposts of the British visual propaganda engine, the Colonial Film Unit. It stands empty on Ikoyi Road, Lagos, in the shadow of today’s Nigerian Film Corporation. Meanwhile, in Bristol, UK the archive of the former British Empire and Commonwealth Museum resides in a former bonded tobacco warehouse on the banks of the River Avon. the walls have mouths reveals a colonial residue that is echoed in walls of the building itself.
Onyeka Igwe’s work is included in Gregarious architectures.
