• Ndidi Dike / Pernod Ricard Fellowship 2017
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    Ndidi Dike / Pernod Ricard Fellowship 2017

    In residency in June, July and August 2017

    Ndidi Dike (b. London 1960), spent her early years in England, She studied painting, majoring in mixed media painting in the University of Nigeria Nsukka where she obtained a BA degree in1984. She is a visual artist working in a variety of media including instal­la­tion, sculp­ture, mixed media painting and more recently lense based media and video. Teaching her­self to sculpt, she has estab­lished her­self as one of the leading con­tem­po­rary artists working on the con­ti­nent, with well over a decade of trans­gres­sive sculp­tural prac­tice. In 2004 she revis­ited painting in her work : her pro­fes­sional method­ology is to locate the appro­priate artistic strategy that best suits the sub­ject of con­tem­pla­tion at that moment.. In order to do so, she uses her research of a par­tic­ular theme or topic. These themes include slavery, con­sumerism, glob­al­iza­tion, urbanism, Nigerian visual cul­ture, art his­tory, cross border/country migra­tion, multi cul­tur­alism, post-colo­nial, studies,iden­tity and con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics. She runs a pro­fes­sional studio in Lagos and has exhib­ited inter­na­tion­ally.

    "How Much Am I Worth?" (details), "State Of The Nation" solo show, National Museum Onikan, Lagos, February 2016

    STATEMENT OF INTENT

    “One main interest of my artistic work is on the pre and post-colo­nial his­to­ries and lega­cies of resource con­trol that have been shaping the African con­ti­nent (or: the Global South) polit­i­cally, eco­nom­i­cally and socially. The planned pro­ject seeks to dis­cuss these issues by focusing on the Democratic Republic of Congo, its past and pre­sent. The pro­ject will give con­tex­tual, his­tor­ical and visual under­standing of King Leopold II of Belgium, his reign of terror and maiming in his country’s colony of DRC. He con­trolled and plun­dered human and nat­ural resources of that country through the extrac­tion of rubber latex, the profit of which funded and built the economy of Brussels (1884-late20th cen­tury). Later on in the his­tory of DRC, dia­monds were ille­gally mined and smug­gled abroad by rebel move­ments to finance wars against “le­git­i­mate” gov­ern­ment. The Kimberley Process was founded to pre­vent this flow of blood dia­monds. In addi­tion, Coltan, a nat­ural pre­cious min­eral resource of DRC was also being ille­gally mined and smug­gled by farmers, youths and chil­dren with atten­u­ating per­sonal and envi­ron­mental cir­cum­stances. This pro­ject’s intent is to con­duct an in-depth research with a broad range of insti­tu­tions that will ulti­mately, visu­ally mate­ri­alize the axis of memory both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively using archival footage, pho­tographs and other data, such as the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac and art academy archives.

    This pro­ject is designed as a con­ti­nental homage and memory to the esti­mated mil­lions of men, women and chil­dren who have died in the guise of resource con­trol and nat­ural resource extrac­tion industry and con­flict min­erals in their country, and yet remain at the edges of con­tem­po­rary con­scious­ness.”