Freedom Bird by Chika Okeke Agulu: Explores Art, Memory, Migration and Nigeria’s Political History Through a Contemporary Lens

The Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA), Pan-Atlantic University, and SMO Contemporary Art are set to present Chika Okeke-Agulu: Freedom Bird, a major survey of the Nigerian artist and scholar's practice spanning more than three decades, from November 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027. Curated by Dr. Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, with Sandra Mbanefo-Obiago as Associate Curator, the retrospective solo exhibition will bring together paintings, drawings and sculptures alongside selected poems, diary entries, photographs and archival materials that illuminate the intellectual, political and personal contexts behind the artist's work.

The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Chika Okeke-Agulu not only as one of the most influential scholars, critics and curators of African art, but first and foremost as an artist whose practice has been shaped by the political and social realities of postcolonial Nigeria. His work emerged during the turbulence of military rule in the 1980s and 1990s, engaging questions of repression, civic life, democratic struggle and the position of artists and intellectuals in a changing Nigeria. His subsequent migration to the United States introduced further questions of exile, memory, displacement and belonging into his artistic vocabulary.