Ken Nwadiogbu Brings Immersive Installation and First Performance to Frieze London

Ken Nwadiogbu, winner of the Young Generation Art Award, will transform the Degussa Lounge at Frieze London into an immersive installation and perform for the first time in his career. The award was initiated by Degussa and Monopol magazine. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1994, Nwadiogbu studied at the Royal College of Art in London and is known for combining hyperrealism with abstract painting, often depicting people from the Black community. His works are frequently painted on handwoven Akwete fabrics from Nigeria's Igbo region, and he will use these same fabrics to line the walls of his exhibition. The show, titled "I Know the Shadow Will Always Be There," explores the theme of masquerade, inspired by Ben Enwonwu's painting "The Dancer," which Nwadiogbu encountered in the exhibition "Nigerian Modernism" at Tate Modern. The mask serves as both a strategy of the immigrant and an inheritance of African tradition. In his performance, taking place on Wednesday and Saturday at the fair, Nwadiogbu will embody the role of a masked dancer, bringing ancestral spirit into contemporary art. He states, "Wherever I go, I carry the energy of my culture and my ancestors with me, whether or not anyone else in the room sees it."