Artist: Ugonna Hosten

Tiwani Contemporary presents The Song I Once Knew, an incredible debut presentation by Ugonna Hosten who centres drawing at the core of her multidisciplinary practice and evolves episodic narratives featuring the psycho-spiritual encounters of a heroine in her own likeness on a pilgrimage of individuation and self-discovery.

The Song I Once Knew features recent and new intricately detailed drawings, scaled between panoramic and intimately scaled scenarios of ritual, worship, acceptance and transformation. We witness the departures and arrivals of Hosten's heroine on her pilgrimage, accompanied by her divine entity, Ebezina.

Ugonna Hosten works across media that includes collage, assemblage and printmaking. She has been engaging a process that she describes as, "broadening and deepening a felt sense of the transpersonal dimension", a spiritual awakening and foundation of a meditative practice that is taking her to new sites within, and uniting different fields of knowledge that includes philosophy, comparative mythologies, analytical psychology (specifically Carl Jung and Fanny Brewster) and Igbo spiritual traditions.

About the artist:

Ugonna Hosten (b.1982 Lagos, Nigeria) lives and works in Kent, UK. She is a multi-disciplinary artist working across media encompassing collage, drawing, assemblage and printmaking. With a particular interest in the nature of the Self, Hosten’s work pulls from vast fields, including philosophy, mythology, depth psychology, alchemy and the ancient spiritual traditions of the Igbos.

Recent exhibitions include: What I Thought I Knew, curated by Ronan McKenzie, Bernie Grant Arts Centre, London, UK (group - 2024); chi: Altarpieces, Liturgy & Devotion (Drawing attention: emerging artists in dialogue), York Art Gallery, York, UK (2023); Instinctive Travels & The Paths of Rhythm, One Paved Court, London, UK (solo - 2022); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, UK (group - 2021); Ty Pawb Print International, Wales, UK (group - 2021); Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, London, UK (2021), and Humanalia(n), One Paved Court, London, UK (group - 2020).

Since her debut solo exhibition in 2022, Hosten has continued to explore and develop a mythical tale of a female protagonist on a pilgrimage guided by a divine entity.