Michael Igwe
Michael Igwe (b. 1994, Lagos, Nigeria) is an artist who works on painting and installation. As an artist whose childhood is primarily populated by folklore handed down orally through Iko Nke Annang, a poetic art form of the Annang tribe in Akwa Ibom, Southern Nigeria, Igwe's interest lies in the dedicated discipline of such narration and in the potential within the painting to shape the nuances of all those narratives that involve him. Therefore, his work comes before our eyes as a clear reminder of the eternal image, herein kept continually alive.
Igwe pursues primal gestures that contemplate and engender the conditions constituting selfhood in each image, yet approaching painting as the embodiment of presence extending beyond one's own. His re-animated bodies create poetics and questions. In his words, how do moving materials elevate them, and how does transcendence occur?
Igwe earned his BFA from the University of Benin, Nigeria, in 2018 and received the inaugural Tilga Art Grant in 2020. He received the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship in 2023. In 2024, he was awarded The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and The Dean Carol Becker Fellowship at Columbia University. Igwe currently lives and works in New York, where he attends Columbia University’s School of the Arts for his MFA degree. Igwe has been invited to participate in projects, exhibitions (solo and group), fairs, and residencies by institutions in Africa, Europe, and the United States.
Selected Works
