• INSIGHT 2.1 | VICTOR EHIKHAMENOR

    For The Love Of Stolen Gods and Reincarnation | 2-31 May 2025

  • INSIGHT 2.0 IS AN EXHIBITION SERIES PRESENTING NEW WORKS BY ARTISTS IN THE PIPPY HOULDSWORTH GALLERY VIEWING ROOMS. REVIVING THE FORMAT OF THE GALLERY'S INSIGHT PROGRAMME INAUGURATED ONLINE IN 2020, EACH SOLO PRESENTATION IS ACCOMPANIED BY A VIDEO OF THE ARTIST IN THEIR STUDIO, SHEDDING LIGHT ON THEIR WORKING PRACTICE AND INNER WORLD. 

     

    For the second edition, Nigerian-American artist Victor Ehikhamenor presents For The Love Of Stolen Gods and Reincarnation, featuring new bronze sculptures and mixed media tapestries, on view both in person and virtually.

     

    Victor Ehikhamenor (b. 1970, Udomi-Uwessan, Nigeria) is a Nigerian American multidisciplinary artist working in textiles, installation, drawing and sculpture. Ehikhamenor focuses on the global African diaspora, the wider legacy of African cultural heritage, and the postcolonial politics of his home nation. In this new body of work, titled For the Love of Stolen Gods & Reincarnation, Ehikhamenor focuses on the global discussion surrounding the return of stolen Benin bronze sculptures, namely the sculptures of heads made by Edo artisans for the royal court of the Oba of Benin Kingdom from the 14th century onwards. Thousands of these sculptures were stolen during the Benin Expedition of 1897 by British forces under the British Empire’s protectorate control of the region, resulting in their subsequent relocation and diffusion worldwide.  Reimagining the forms, history and legacy of the iconic Benin bronzes in his sculptures and his textile-based works, the artist creates a dialogue between past and present that seeks to reawaken the public’s sensibility towards the historical artforms. Ehikhamenor deepens his call for the return of the Benin bronzes to modern-day Nigeria, where they can once again be revered within the context of their cultural origins. 

  • Victor Ehikhamenor, It Is a Living Head That Wears a Crown, 2025

    Victor Ehikhamenor

    It Is a Living Head That Wears a Crown, 2025

    In his textile-based works, Ehikhamenor painstakingly sews tens of thousands of beads and plastic rosaries onto quilted fabric. His figures are adorned in red and white garments, each mimicking the coral headdress, coral necklaces and robes worn by The Kingdom of Benin royalty. The rosaries and their dangling crucifixes speak to Nigeria’s complex relationship with Christianity, a nation that is deeply immersed in the religious beliefs brought in by colonial powers and mixed amongst indigenous or local traditions. The plastic nature of the rosaries furthers the discourse on religious migration and colonisation, comparing globalised belief systems to those of international trade and mass production.

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    £ 43,000.00 (ex tax)

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  • Victor Ehikhamenor, Immaculate Iyoba (Queen Mother), 2025

    Victor Ehikhamenor

    Immaculate Iyoba (Queen Mother), 2025

    In his latest rosary works, It Is a Living Head That Wears a Crown and Immaculate Iyoba (Queen Mother), Ehikhamenor’s patchwork of rosaries are tightly woven onto a quilted fabric in bands of yellow, red, green and white. These are the colours of the striped clothing work by Esan masquerade dancers performing the highly acrobatic Igbabonelimhin or dance of the spirits in the Edo State of Nigeria. In part concealed by his beadwork, the colours of this traditional dance seek to ground these works in a unique place and time.

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    £ 43,000.00 (ex tax)

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  • Victor Ehikhamenor, Reincarnation (II), 2025

    Victor Ehikhamenor

    Reincarnation (II), 2025

    In Reincarnation (II), Ehikhamenor creates a visual and conceptual dialogue with historical Edo artists in both his formal considerations and his emphasized materiality of bronze as a cast medium. Collaborating with local foundries in the precise location that Benin bronzes have been produced for centuries, with the traditional lost wax casting method, Ehikhamenor works within a temporal and material continuum. In a formal dialogue between past and present, the artist casts abstracted versions of the beaded, tiered headdresses and collar-like coral necklaces worn by the Oba and Benin kingdom nobility, as seen in many of the bronzes made during the two golden ages of bronze production in the Oba Esigie (c. 1550) and Oba Eresoyen (1735–1750) reigns.

     

    However, in a departure from tradition, Ehikhamenor renders the face of his figure bare, leaving a highly polished surface that is impenetrable and unflinching. The undefined face signifies the role of absence within the global narrative of the Benin bronzes, the erasure and silencing of Edo cultural heritage in the wake of colonial extraction.

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    £ 17,500.00 (ex tax)

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    Courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. 
  • Victor Ehikhamenor (b. 1970, Udomi-Uwessan, Nigeria) lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds an MFA in Fiction and an...

    Victor Ehikhamenor (b. 1970, Udomi-Uwessan, Nigeria) lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds an MFA in Fiction and an MSc from the University of Maryland (2004; 2008), and a BA from Ambrose Alli University, Nigeria (1991). In 2022 he was commissioned to create a large scale installation, Still Standing, in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Enigma of Time Remembered, Maruani Mercier (2024); REFUGE, Lagos Biennial, Nigeria (2024); Rites of Passage, Gagosian, London (2023); Free the Wind, The Spirit, and the Sun, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2023); Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes, South London Gallery, London (2023); amongst others. His immersive installations include those at Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2021); The Nigerian Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017); and the 12th Dak’art Biennale, Senegal (2016), amongst others. His collections include The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; The High Museum, Atlanta, GA; the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK; Museum der Kulturen Basel, Switzerland; The Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin, Germany; The Onassis Foundation, Athens, Greece; The Museum of World Art, The Netherlands; Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Lagos, Nigeria; and The MARKK Museum, Hamburg, Germany; amongst others.