Fellow and Tutor in Fine Art Onyeka Igwe has been awarded the 2025 Film London Jarman Award. Now in its eighteenth year, the Jarman Award is a well-established marker of achievement for artists working with film and video in the UK.
A still from Onyeka Igwe's film, A Radical Duet (2023).
For the first time in its history, the award was shared between two artists – Onyeka was jointly recognised alongside Morgan Quaintance for what the jury described as their “significant bodies of work at the forefront of artists’ moving image practice.”
Reflecting on the award, Onyeka said: “I am deeply grateful to the jury of the 2025 Jarman Award to be jointly recognised for my moving image practice. Derek Jarman was a radical filmmaker who produced daring artistic films that reflected and were embedded in his community – I can only hope to emulate such a practice into the future.”
Alongside her role as Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Ruskin School of Art, Onyeka works across film, sound, text and performance to explore historical, social and political questions about how we live together. Her practice draws on extensive research to illuminate overlooked moments in history, often tracing connections between Britain and Nigeria and engaging with the politics of anti-colonial resistance. She frequently works with archival materials and performance, developing a cinematic language attentive to space, memory and community. Her essay films, which have been shown at MoMA PS1, the Venice Biennale and venues across the UK, examine themes such as colonial propaganda, feminist embodiment and diasporic exchange.
The Jarman Award jury highlighted the breadth of Onyeka’s work, which moves between documentary approaches, scripted narrative and sculptural installation, and noted her commitment to positively challenging both audiences and herself as an artist. Among her recent projects is A Radical Duet (2023), a film that revisits 1947 London, then a centre of anti-colonial activity. It imagines an encounter between two generations of women who come together to write a revolutionary play intended to shape a future beyond colonial rule.
Onyeka’s interest in post-colonial thought continues in her current exhibition at Tate Britain, our generous mother, presented as part of the Art Now series. The installation explores the history of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s oldest degree-awarding institution, established under British colonial administration in 1948 and later a centre of radical intellectual life in post-independence Nigeria.
Art Now: Onyeka Igwe, our generous mother is on view at Tate Britain until 17 May 2026.
