ARTIST
Victor Ehikhamenor
Victor Ehikhamenor is a Nigerian artist, photographer and writer. Ehikhamenor has been prolific in producing abstract, symbolic and politically motivated works.
A 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow, Ehikhamenor has held several solo exhibitions and his work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennales, including the 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Nigerian Pavilion (2017), 5th Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland (2016), the 12th Dak’art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal (2016), Biennale Jogja XIII, Indonesia (2015), and the 56th Venice Biennale as part of the German Pavilion (2015).
Ehikhamenor has had numerous exhibitions with strong following in Nigeria, the United States, Asia, the UK and other parts of Europe. His fictional work “Madam” and drawings “Postcards from Italy” were part of the German pavilion in the 56th Venice Biennale, “All the World’s Future”, curated by Okwui Enwezor in 2015.
He was also one of the eleven Nigerian artists at the 2015 Jogja Biennale in Indonesia where he presented his monumental installation, “The Wealth of Nations”. One of the three artists at the first Nigerian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, “A Biography of the Forgotten” was the work showcased at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). As a writer he has published numerous fiction and critical essays with academic journals, mainstream magazines and newspapers round the world including New York Times, BBC, CNN Online, Washington Post, Farafina, AGNI magazine, Wasafiri Magazine and others.
Ehikhamenor received his MFA in the University of Maryland, College park. He maintains a studio in Lagos, Nigeria and Maryland, U.S.A.
Featured Work
2020
Saints and Sanctum, Powerhouse
An installation about spirituality, dispossession, understanding and assimilation. In this work the artist combines Catholic prayer rosaries with artefacts from traditional Edo systems. The African ways of worship which were once demonised have evolved and now exist together with Catholicism in Nigeria.
Some would say it was serendipity that led the artist to this small building when he arrived on site. When he looked through the windows, he realised that this was where the generators which used to supply electricity to the whole precinct were housed. Painting the walls in his iconic abstract shapes in yellow on black, Ehikhamenor references both the literal and the metaphorical. Not only does the building house the disused power generator, but being at the en- trance to the main exhibition space it reminds him of the buildings at the entrance of traditional Nigerian villages where the elders meet and the ancestors are commemorated; buildings that house the power(ful) in the community. Stellenbosch is a significant seat of power in South Africa, but like the abandoned gen- erator, could power shift over time?
