Ndidi Dike: Rare Earth Rare Justice

Ndidi Dike is an internationally renowned British-Nigerian artist born in London, who works across a multiplicity of fields, including mixed media, painting, sculpture, collage, photography, video and installation. As one of Nigeria’s leading artists, she addresses the social, political, and economic concerns of the modern era, with a particular focus on how the experience of colonialism and postcolonialism and global capitalism have informed contemporary urban cultures, seascapes and landscapes.

In her work, the artist explores personal archives, the history of the enslaved, migration, memory, identity, displacement, and the legacies of extractive industries. Her projects often unfold over long periods of research, during which she investigates interconnected global histories and the socio-political structures that shape them. Materiality plays a key role: the objects and forms bear traces of their former economic, social, and political lives. By combining found objects, photographs, and sculptural elements, Dike creates works that weave together reality and imagination, juxtaposing images and references from diverse cultural contexts. In recent years, she has focused on commodity marketplaces – examining them as both physical spaces and social and political arenas. Each work emerges from months of research, with materials carefully chosen to respond to the questions driving the project.

Rare Earth Rare Justice, the artist’s first major exhibition in an Austrian institution, confronts the ongoing exploitation of Africa’s natural resources, focusing particularly on the extraction of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her research traces the links between extractive industries, ecological devastation, climate change, and the resource-driven conflicts that fuel displacement and human catastrophe.

Rare Earth Rare Justice was developed by Ndidi Dike in close collaboration with the Secession. Further adapted chapters will be presented at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, in 2026 and at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, in 2027. The new body of work was co-commissioned by the three partners.

secession.at