Onome Ekeh

"Glittering Witness II" features as part of the show "Mémoires Voyageuses" at @kunsthausbaselland opening on May 21st. The "Glittering Witness" series is an exercise in speculative genealogy--remixing the latent space of myth, oral tradition, and colonial suppression... #kunsthausbaselland #memoiresvoyageuses #glitteringwitness

I gave a talk last November at CIMAM @cimam_museums 2025 in Torino, “The Networked Museum: Lessons from Finding Nemo”. In it, I revisit the Pixar’s 2003 animated classic which reveals the ocean not as a single vast expanse, but as a vibrant web of currents, signals, encounters, and interdependent communities. Marlin’s journey reveals an ecosystem built on connection. A story spreads, mutates, and gathers force across species and environments, becoming myth through circulation. Through this lens we can think of the museum as a node, rather than a centralised hub. What might it mean for museums to shift from guardians of objects to generators of narratives, relationships, and collective imaginaries? Read here: /wordpress/?p=5676 #CIMAM2025 #EnduringGame #MappingDesires #latergram #findingnemo #networked

I'm in the group show "Mémoires Voyageuse" at @kunsthausbaselland with @raphaelbarontini #joanaescoval @bineldehyrcan @mateomate_oficial @sofiasalazarbb @1alinemotta and @uambembe The exhibition takes a lens to the subject of memory--particularly in the diasporic instance. Opening next Thursday, May 21st. On view until mid-August. Come through!

Excerpts from my Spring Seminar Reverse Ecologies: Systems, Strange Attractors & Peacock Gambits 1. A Dzogchen fable: the Peacock doesn't avoid poison — it metabolises it into something strange and beautiful. This is the Peacock's Gambit. 2. Attractors in dynamical systems describe everything from weather patterns to civilisational movements. Strange attractors in particular: never settling, never repeating, tracing a shape that only becomes visible over time. 3.Diana Vreeland offers the proof. This is how you become a strange attractor. 4. Mansa Musa, Cairo, 1324: during his Hajj stopover he distributed so much gold to sultan and beggar alike that he destabilised the Egyptian economy for over a decade. Illegibility as power. 5. Georges Bataille's cosmic observation: the ritual expenditure of surplus isn't waste — it's the driving force of human society. Mansa Musa understood this before the theory existed. 6.Blues takes suffering as its literal subject matter and metabolises it into communal ecstasy. The Peacock's Gambit executed in real time. 7.A cautionary inversion: what happens when a strange attractor becomes too powerful to absorb, and too powerful to release? You destroy the peacock while wearing its feathers. 8.Djibril Diop Mambéty's “Hyenas” (1992) transposes Dürrenmatt's The Visit — a woman returns to her village with infinite wealth and a price on a man's head — onto rural Senegal. The gift economy. The shadow attractor. The village that says yes. 9. Nat Turner's rebellion was first transcribed by attorney Thomas Gray as Turner awaited the gallows. This first-person account filtered through the hand of the state, included supernatural signs and wonders. Some interpreted this as proof of Turner’s psychosis. 10. William Styron's “Confessions of Nat Turner” won the Pulitzer in 1967 — and made the rebellion legible to white audiences in ways that provoked a sharp collective response from Black intellectuals. James Baldwin invited Styron into dialogue with Ossie Davis. Worth finding on YouTube. (continued in comments) #ReverseEcologies #PeacockGambit #CinemaNovo #AestheticsOfHunger #DjibrilDiopMambety #StrangeAttractors #natturnerrebellion

Gearing up to be part of the group show ‘Mémoires Voyageuses’ at @kunsthausbaselland this May. My series “Glittering Witness”, an ancestral invocation, becomes immersive…. Stay tuned. #glitteringwitness #kunsthausbaselland #springawakenings #thethingsyoucarry

Join us this Fri 20 March for a conversation between Lynnée Denise and Onome Ekeh, followed by the opening of VORHANG by Emil Michael Klein at der TANK. Associative selections: Sights and Sounds of a Diasporic Trajectory Conversation between Lynnée Denise and Onome Ekeh Organized by Rim Harrabi and Onome Ekeh Fri 20 March 2026, 4.30 – 6 pm Studio Cinema, Tower Buidling, HGK Basel FHNW In this intimate conversation, Lynnée Denise and Onome Ekeh come together through music, curating the sounds that have shaped their lives across places, eras, and encounters. Their selections trace a journey from South Africa to New York, Nigeria to California, London to Europe, weaving through childhood memories, migration, and the movements that shaped them and their scholarship. Together, they explore the sonic threads of Black experience: the pulse of House, Disco, house,, Jazz, Hip Hop, and reggae,.. ; the resistance embedded in dance and sound; the intersections of Black music movements and gender liberation. Their conversation moves through key political moments, historical events, and the liberatory rhythms that emerged in response. This conversation is also an invitation to listen deeply and critically, to follow sound across borders, and to discover how memory and music connect us across geography and time. Following the conversation, the exhibition opening of VORHANG by Emil Michael Klein at der TANK will take place from 6 pm, just a few steps from Studio Cinema. djlynneedenise.com theinternationallocals.nl @lynneedenise @memorexe #rimharrabi @the_chus_martinez @hgkbasel_institutkunst @hgkbasel_fhnw #dertank #emilmichaelklein #romankurzmeyer

Who teaches in our BA and MA programs? To meet our inspiring and dedicated lecturers stay tuned for the full introduction series. Onome Ekeh joined us as a lecturer in our BA and MA in 2022 and is part of Forum 2, together with Nadja Solari and Jeronimo Voss. The Forum is essential to our BA and every student is part of one of the three Forum groups, each led by three artists/teachers. The regular Forum meetings are fundamental to socialize your ideas. You are invited to present your work and to attend the presentations of the other artists in your group. In the Forum you will be confronted with questions that goes beyond your own interests: What constitutes contemporary art today? Are all gender given the same possibilities in the art context? How do I learn to link the big discourses in art and broader questions with my own interests? Born and raised on both sides of the Atlantic, Onome started out as a painter, transitioned to design, fell in love with cinema, went digital and picked up an AI habit. Her interdisciplinary body of work spans film, video, theater, literature, and radio. She is a recipient of numerous accolades and fellowships, including the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation Fellowship, a Turbulence Media Award, and the Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Fellowship. A frequent speaker on the intersection of nature and technology, her work is featured in the Serpentine Gallery’s publication, The Shape of the Circle in the Mind of a Fish. In 2024, she curated The Glittering Field for AOA;87 Contemporary. Her exhibition history includes Especulaciones at Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires, HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel, and Basel Social Club. thememorexe.com futurezoo.net 1 lecture at CIMAM’s 57th Annual Conference, 2025 📷 Limardo Guido 2 future fossil glam 01, 2025 3 Glittering Witness, 2024 (detail) Apply for our BA program by 15 February 2026 and for our MA program by 15 March 2026. More information on dertank.ch (link in bio). #studywithus @memorexe @nadjasolari @jeronimo.voss @the_chus_martinez @hgkbasel_institutkunst @hgkbasel_fhnw @cimam_museums

A New Year is upon us. May we move through it powered by dreams, fluent in speculation, dressed on arrival for the futures we are already inhabit. #NewYear #2026 #AfricansAbroad #AfricanJetset #SpeculativeFiction #DiasporaFutures

Now showing Fall/Winter 2525: future fashion excavations, the sensuous debris of the now... music from 'Diskont' by Oval #FutureFossil #FutureFossilGlam #FutureFashionWeek #SpeculativeFiction

Future Fossil Glam: rotation study #futurefossil #futurefossilglam #twilightprotocols #speculativefiction #thememorexe

Check out the works of @numerocromatico and @memorexe presented at art:badgastein X POSITIONS (@sommer.frische.kunst , @positions.artfair ) from June 27 to July 6, 2025.

Opening Hours: 
Saturday, 28 June – Sunday, 29 June: 2:00 – 7:00 PM 
Monday, 30 June – Friday, 4 July: 4:00 – 7:00 PM 
Saturday, 5 July: 2:00 – 7:00 PM 
Sunday, 6 July: 2:00 – 6:00 PM 

ART:BADGASTEIN X POSITIONS 
27 JUNE – 6 JULY 2025 
OPENING: 27 JUNE | 4 PM
HOTEL ASTORIA, BAD GASTEIN 

featured artworks: 

Numero Cromatico I carry you in my arms and in my tears 2023 Arazzi, hand-crafted wool tapestry on wooden panel 70 x 50 cm 
Onome Ekeh Glittering Witness #7 2024 ASCII-generated image on Alu-Dibond 60 x 60 cm

For inquiries, please contact us at [email protected] or through our website. 
#AOA87 #SommerFrischeKunst #ArtBadgastein #PositionsArtFair #BadGastein #NumeroCromatico #OnomeEkeh #NorikoAmbe #HolgerSchmidhuber

Photo Artworks: © courtesy of the artists and @dotgain.info

MUTE - First single from the SISTER album is live! Genius video created by Onome Ekeh, see her other work @memorexe . I thought all these songs were about the women in my life but I think they also came from my immigrant experience - one has to navigate challenges to one’s culture and conditioning, even personality. #scotland filled me with wonder and at times scared the shit out of me. I made loads of mistakes, worked on becoming better and now am happy and home. Onome saw the springbok as the protagonist - vulnerable to predators, but agile and fast as hell - genius! Hope you like the song, it’s a bit of a style departure for me. Available on all streaming platforms and even better from my Bandcamp Marilyncarino.Bandcamp.com. Love to all x