The Block is delighted to welcome Uche Okpa-Iroha as the museum’s 2025–2026 graduate art history fellow. Uche is a PhD candidate in Art History at Northwestern University whose research explores the development of modes and theories of representation—how they have been historically constructed and how they continue to shape artistic and scholarly inquiry today.

A Nigerian visual artist with more than two decades of practice in photography and video art, Uche’s academic and creative work investigates photographic archives, postcolonial memory, and artistic responses to transatlantic histories of dislocation and diaspora. He is the founder and director of Lagos-based photography school The Nlele Institute, a founding member of both the Blackbox Photography Collective and the Invisible Borders Trans-African photography travel group, and a two-time recipient of the Grand Prix Seydou Keïta Award at the Bamako Encounters.

We took a moment to ask Uche about his background, research, and his work at The Block this year.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and your field of study?

I am a Nigerian visual artist, and fourth-year Ph.D. student in Art History at Northwestern University. My academic journey is grounded in over two decades of artistic practice in photography and video art, with exhibitions and residencies across Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia. My doctoral research focuses on photographic archives in postcolonial Nigeria, particularly the underexplored archive of Pius Akpan, a government photographer active from the 1970s to the 1990s. I examine how his work captures themes of abandonment, censorship, and civil deterioration, and how it challenges dominant historical narratives through the lens of memory and silence. My work seeks to challenge dominant art historical narratives by foregrounding neglected visual histories and marginalized voices. I am particularly interested in how archives — especially those created outside institutional frameworks — can be reactivated through curatorial practice to generate new forms of knowledge and public engagement. This inquiry is not only academic but also deeply personal and political, reflecting my broader commitment to using art and curatorial strategies as tools for critical reflection, cultural preservation, and social transformation.

What areas of research most animate your work, and how do they connect to broader conversations in art history, history, or museum studies?

My research is animated by the intersections of photography, archival studies, art history and postcolonial theory. I’m particularly interested in how visual archives function as sites of memory, erasure, and resistance. For instance, by analyzing a non-Western archive like Akpan’s, I explore how neglected visual histories can reshape our understanding of Nigeria’s socio-political landscape, especially during pivotal moments like FESTAC ’77 and the post-civil war military regimes. This work contributes to broader conversations in art history and museum studies by interrogating the politics of representation, the ethics of archival recovery, and the role of curatorial practice in amplifying marginalized voices.

What projects are you focusing on during your fellowship at The Block?

During my fellowship at The Block Museum, I am conceiving and producing a new exhibition that will be presented in the Leffmann Gallery during the Spring Quarter of 2026. This project is envisioned as a critical and dialogic response to the concurrent exhibitions of Hamdia Traoré: Des marabouts de Djenné and Teresa Montoya: Tó Łitso (Yellow Water). Both of these exhibitions engage deeply with questions of visual sovereignty, environmental justice, resources (land), community (people) and the politics of representation—concerns that resonate strongly with my own research and curatorial interests.

This project is not only an opportunity to bring my academic research into public dialogue, but also a chance to experiment with curatorial strategies that foreground critical reflection, interdisciplinary engagement, and community relevance. I aim to create a space that invites viewers to consider how visual histories are constructed, silenced, and reactivated — and how these processes intersect with contemporary struggles for visibility, justice, and historical accountability.

In developing this exhibition, I am particularly excited to collaborate with Block Museum staff, faculty, and fellow researchers to shape a curatorial approach that is both rigorous and accessible. The Leffmann Gallery provides a unique platform for this kind of experimental and research-driven curatorial work, and I see this project as a vital contribution to the museum’s mission of fostering critical inquiry through art.

What aspects of the curatorial process are you most eager to explore during your time here?

I’m eager to explore the interpretive and collaborative dimensions of curating — how curators shape narratives through selection, display, and public engagement. I’m particularly interested in how curatorial work can bridge academic research and public discourse, especially when dealing with complex or contested histories. I also look forward to learning more about exhibition design, institutional collaboration, and the ethical considerations involved in working with archival materials and community histories.

How do you see this fellowship connecting to your dissertation, future research, or professional goals?

For me, this fellowship is an important extension of my dissertation, which examines archives as performative spaces of silence and resistance. The Block’s interdisciplinary and socially engaged approach aligns with my goal of producing scholarship and exhibitions that resonate beyond academia. Professionally, I see this experience as a stepping stone toward a career that bridges curatorial practice, academic research, and community engagement—particularly in contexts that center African and diasporic visual cultures.

What museum exhibitions, curatorial approaches, or scholarly projects (outside The Block) have inspired your thinking recently?

One exhibition that has profoundly shaped my recent thinking is Project A Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica at the Art Institute of Chicago curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Matthew S. Witkovsky, Adom Getachew, and Elvira Dyangani Ose. This ambitious and timely exhibition offers a sweeping and multifaceted exploration of Pan-Africanism — not merely as a political ideology, but as a cultural and aesthetic force that has shaped artistic production across Africa and its diasporas from the mid-20th century to the present.

What I find particularly compelling is the exhibition’s curatorial strategy, which resists linear or monolithic narratives. Instead, it embraces a speculative and transhistorical approach, weaving together visual art, archival materials, music, and ephemera to map the complex networks of solidarity, resistance, and futurity that define Pan-African thought. The curators’ use of “speculative cartographies” as a framing device resonates deeply with my own research on photographic archives and postcolonial memory — especially in how it foregrounds the role of imagination in reconstructing suppressed or fragmented histories.

Moreover, the exhibition’s emphasis on transnational dialogue—between artists, movements, and geographies—mirrors my own curatorial and scholarly commitment to thinking across borders. It challenges the viewer to consider how visual culture can serve as a connective tissue between seemingly disparate struggles, and how archives (both formal and informal) can be mobilized to articulate new forms of belonging and resistance.

In many ways, Project A Black Planet affirms the urgency of the questions I am asking in my dissertation and curatorial practice: How do we recover and reframe silenced histories? What role does the visual archive play in shaping collective memory? And how can curatorial work serve as a platform for critical reflection, political engagement, and cultural transformation?

This exhibition has not only inspired my thinking but has also provided a curatorial model for how to engage with complex histories in ways that are both intellectually rigorous and publicly resonant.