Victor Ehikhamenor (b. 1970) is a Nigerian-American multidisciplinary visual artist and writer known for his vibrant and incisive works using materials and iconography that embrace the traditions and histories of Africa while integrating elements that allude to the continent's colonial past and Nigeria's complex geopolitical position as an oil-producing nation, offering insight into contemporary Nigeria while lighting a path forward for the country and its people.
Read MoreEhikhamenor was born and raised in Uwessan in Edo state in Nigeria, steeped in the visual traditions of the Benin Kingdom. These traditions include the practice of regularly re-painting the interior walls of buildings with fields of colour and iconography, and the creation of shrines that hold sacred artworks, especially the bronze sculptures for which the region is known. The Benin Bronzes, as they are known, have become a political lightning rod for the conversation around the looting of Africa that forms the base collection of many Western museums' collections. These histories and traditions are ever-present in Ehikhamenor's work, offering a searing criticism of colonialism while celebrating the dynamic and complex realities of present-day Nigeria.
Ehikhamenor's art falls broadly into three categories: works using his signature abstracted iconography to fill and shape forms and figures (across drawings, paintings, sculptures, and immersive installations); works created using plastic rosaries as the core medium, sewn onto canvas to form figures and scenes; and works on paper that are created through a series of perforations. Throughout his practice, Ehikhamenor employs unexpected techniques of making and unmaking, of building images and shapes, and of constructing figurative works from complex, ancient scripts, tears and holes, and Catholic symbols –– to create portraits of Black people and depict African spaces. The scenes and figures depicted are often figurative and a mix of symbols that straddle his Benin Kingdom traditions and Catholic upbringing. This duality builds narratives that comment on the complex cultural and political reality of Nigerians in their private and public lives, both historically and today.
Ehikhamenor's work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the first Nigerian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. He has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide including the Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany, Fondacion Blachere, France, St. Paul's Cathedral, London, UK, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 5th Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland, 12th Dak'art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal, Stellenbosch Triennale, South Africa, and Biennale Jogja XIII, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, among many others.
Text courtesy Maruani Mercier.
