Onyeka Igwe | A Repertoire of Protest (No Dance, No Palaver) 
16th March - 21st August 2023 

The exhibition features 3 short films - Her Name in My Mouth (2017), Sitting on a Man (2018), and Specialised Technique (2018) - presented as expanded cinema. 

“The layered structure of Igwe’s films exposes the narrative multiplicities of contemporary life and contests Western ideology’s singular, progressive origin story. Her rhythmic editing style emphasizes the dissonance, reflection, and amplification between image and sound, set within a spatial installation. The principal subject of the film cycle is the 1929 Aba Women’s War, which Igwe first learned about from family lore. Led primarily by Igbo women, the conflict is considered one of the first anti-colonial uprisings in Nigeria and marks a violent episode in the defense of the British Empire. By conceptually recovering the repressed history of this collective act of resistance, Igwe finds, even in the tragedies of the past, new means for understanding the present. The exhibition highlights the artist’s ongoing interest in the relation between physical movement—that is, dance—and protest movements, especially those enacted by women." 

-Extract from the exhibition text

On 20th March, MoMA present a programme of recent films by Onyeka, including a so-called archive (2020).
More information at the link: https://bit.ly/IgweMoMA