In the month of January we are proud to present Onyeka Igwe’s film A Radical Duet (2023). The film takes you to London in the late 1940’s, roiled with anti-colonial and Black feminist energies, when the hopes of Pan-Africanism were fully alive. Inspired by the lives of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Sylvia Wynter, the film combines narrative reenactments with 16mm archival footage to explore mid-century Black intellectual life in London. It also examines the tensions between the older generation’s diplomatic pragmatism and the more combative younger activists, revealing the debates that shaped anti-colonialism activism at the time. Alongside these reenactments, the film includes moments of documentation, showing actors un-costumed as they, together with the artist, work with archival materials and reflect on Igwe’s research conducted in preparation for the film. Through this blend of performance and archival engagement, A Radical Duet becomes a radical reworking of archival materials and histories.
Onyeka Igwe is a London-born artist, filmmaker, and researcher specializing in moving-image works and installations that probe the dynamics of communal living, mutuality, and overlooked histories of Black experiences through sensorial and counter-hegemonic approaches. Her practice draws on archives, oral narratives, and the body to highlight everyday aspects of Black livingness, employing rhythmic editing, spatial sound, and dissonance between image and sound to challenge dominant structures of knowledge.
Image: Onyeka Igwe, A Radical Duet (2023) video still. Courtesy the artist and Arcadia Missa.