LMH Fellow and Tutor in Fine Art Onyeka Igwe is currently exhibiting at Tate Britain as part of its ongoing Art Now series, which highlights early-career artists working in the UK.
Onyeka’s immersive exhibition, titled ‘our generous mother’, brings together new works in film, projected slides and sculpture to tell the story of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s oldest degree-awarding institution. Founded in 1948 while Nigeria was still under British colonial rule, the University of Ibadan was established, along with universities in other colonised countries, as a branch of the University of London before eventually becoming independent in 1962.
Moving through the university’s tropical modernist architecture, the exhibition traces the building’s personal and political histories - from its colonial foundations through to national independence, civil war and into the present day. Visitors encounter the work in a dark green space where the film appears in several forms: as a Perspex sculpture that fractures the content, suggestive of the many ways a single place can be understood; then as a slide projection; and finally as a film projected onto a large screen.
Across these various forms, Onyeka draws on her interest in radical filmmaking to consider how history and collective memory can be represented to tell the complex story of this institution. An accompanying essay, our mother’s peculiar mess by Xavier Alexandre Pillai, offers further historical context to the exhibition and how it came about.
To prepare for the project, Onyeka and Xavier carried out research in libraries and archives in the UK and Nigeria, including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Bodleian Library, and many audiovisual collections and libraries in Lagos.
‘Art Now: Onyeka Igwe, our generous mother’ is on view at Tate Britain until 17 May 2026.
For more information, visit the Tate Britain website.
Alongside her post at LMH, Onyeka is Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Ruskin School of Art, where she is also Course Leader for the MFA programme. As an artist, writer and researcher, Onyeka’s work asks how we live together, exploring the social, political and historical contexts that shape shared experience. Her recent exhibitions include MoMA PS1 in New York, Bonington Gallery in Nottingham and Peer in London, as well as participation in international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and Lagos Biennial.
