The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires is proud to present the first museum show in Argentina of Onome Ekeh, an artist born and raised on either side of the Atlantic, who started out as a painter, transitioned to design, fell in love with film and, somewhere in the collusion, went digital and picked up an AI habit along the way. Her work encompasses film, video, theatre, literature and radio. This exhibition presents the artist’s most recent films and images from the series African Jetset (2022), Afropunk, Lagos, 1982 (2022) and Glittering Witness (2024).
Speculative in structure, these works alter the passing of time, re-imagining the past and projecting possible futures of African design. A case in point is African Jetset, a series created in response to the violence and trauma that has marked the bulk of African migrations, from slavery to economic or conflict-driven displacement. In Ekeh’s words, ‘I wanted to create a corrective space, an alternative timeline where there was never any interruption: no slave trade, no colonialisation, no external war or plunder. Instead, the continent developed along internally prosperous lines, with Africans allowed to luxuriate in the bounty of the natural resources of their homelands.’ In a shamanic twist, this retrospection is the future.
In her film The Curiously Dressed Gentleman, presented during the 2024 art fair in Basel, Switzerland, the artist perpetrates the fictional hijack of the Swiss financial system as a means of subverting the ongoing homogenisation of the Western imaginary. Through extraordinary visuals, Ekeh’s surreal montage enacts the collapse of a mysterious icon of human perfection devoured by the souls of the jungle.
The Society of the Birds takes a more autobiographical turn. An exercise in speculative genealogy, the artist unbridles her anarchic drive and draws upon the infinite possibilities of artificial intelligence to spin a fabulous tale of bird societies. It relays the imagined saga of her ancestors as resistance enveloped in a riddle that subverts colonial and military subjugation.
Ekeh´s website www.thememorexe.com is a repository for her fiction, sound works, essays and other research.
Curated by: Victoria Noorthoorn
Exhibition Design: Iván Rösler
Production: Edgar Lacombe
Onome Ekeh was raised on both sides of the Atlantic. OE started out as a painter, transitioned to design, fell in love with cinema, and somewhere in the collusion, went digital. Along the way she picked up an AI habit. A veteran of the New York downtown scene, she presides over a diverse body of work that encompasses film, video, theater, literature, and radio. Collaborations include works with Mabou Mines, Grisha Coleman, Okwui Okpokwasili, Carl Hancock Rux, David Thomson, and Annie Dorsen.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation Fellowship, a Turbulence Media Award, and the Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Fellowship. Recent exhibitions include shows at the House of Electronic Arts Basel (HEK); Basel Social Club; and a feature in the upcoming Serpentine Gallery publication, The Shape of the Circle in the Mind of a Fish. For Berlin Art Week 2024, she curated a showcase featuring 16 international artists for AOA;87 Contemporary Gallery.
Ekeh is a frequent speaker and panelist on the intersections of art, technology and nature in forums such as the University of Basel, ArtTech Foundation, and CIMAM. She currently lectures on Speculative Culture in the Masters and Bachelors programs of the Basel Academy of Art & Design in Switzerland.