Victor Ehikhamenor: Undoing the City, Making Home explores resistance, resilience and cultural identity amid displacement and gentrification. Through exhibitions and community partnerships, it highlights shared stories of survival, memory and creative resistance across continents.
A meditation on resistance, resilience, and cultural continuity when marginalized communities confront extraction, displacement, and gentrification. A partnership between the Chau Chak Wing Museum and Blacktown Arts, the project centres on acclaimed Nigerian-American artist Victor Ehikhamenor, whose practice examines colonialism, globalisation, spirituality, and cultural identity. It emerges from collaborative research by Associate Professor Lucia Sorbera (University of Sydney) and Professor Mark LeVine (University of California, Irvine), exploring creative responses to forced urban change in the Okrika Waterfront of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, with fieldwork also conducted in Egypt, Kenya, and Australia.
Presented across multiple sites, Ehikhamenor's work and public programs connect communities across continents, revealing shared histories of dispossession, survival, and creative resistance, positioning the artist as archivist for stories that would otherwise be forgotten. At the Chau Chak Wing Museum, new and recent works draw together stories, symbols, and artistic responses that sustain cultural identity and collective memory. Through Blacktown Arts, Ehikhamenor has collaborated with community partners, artists, and cultural organisations to foster dialogue, participation, and mentorship, extending the project beyond the museum. Together, these initiatives highlight art's power to challenge erasure, strengthen community connections, and imagine more equitable urban futures.
Victor Ehikhamenor: Undoing the City, Making Home is co-produced by the Chau Chak Wing Museum and Blacktown Arts and Blacktown City Council.
This project has been supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, and by the Vere Gordon Childe Center, the University of Sydney.
It has been supported by the Collaborative Media Advocacy Platform and Chicoco Media, who provided essential background research, visual archives, and soundscapes.
Victor Ehikhamenor
Paul Donnelly (Chau Chak Wing Museum), Anne-Louise Dadak and Talia Smith (Blacktown Arts)
Lucia Sorbera (University of Sydney, Arabic Language and Cultures), Professor Mark Levine (University of California, Irvine)
Alia Ardon
Luke Parker
Exhibition open:
15 October 2026 - 26 April 2027
Penelope Gallery, Level 1
Chau Chak Wing Museum
Free
Header image: detail shot of Ogidigan, The Sun That Never Sets, by Victor Ehikhamenor
