Meet Ndidi Dike – Press preview of Rare Earth Rare Justice

Färgfabriken proudly presents Ndidi Dike – Rare Earth Rare Justice

Rare Earth Rare Justice by British-Nigerian artist Ndidi Dike opens August 29.

Over several decades Ndidi Dike has developed a practice that brings together sculpture, installation, archival materials, and found objects in artistic investigations of power, colonialism, and ecological destruction. Her works often emerge from extensive research, in which the origins, circulation, and previous uses of materials assume central importance. The objects that make up her installations appear not merely as materials, but as carriers of stories about human life, economic systems, and historical relations of power.

The exhibition Rare Earth Rare Justice unfolds across Färgfabriken’s Main Hall, structured around three landscapes in terracotta, kaolin, and cobalt. Together, they form tactile topographies that function as both geographical and mental maps – what Dike refers to as “mine/mindscapes” – bringing together earth’s resources and human imagination.

At the centre of the exhibition, a monumental sculpture composed of hundreds of neck rests used in autopsies is suspended in the space. Simultaneously evoking a bullet and taking the form of a slave ship, the work becomes a powerful interweaving of historical and contemporary structures of violence. Dike reminds us that contemporary economic systems did not emerge in a historical vacuum, but are rooted in centuries of exploitation, extraction, and forced displacement. History appears not as something concluded, but as a continuing force whose effects still shape the relationships between people, resources, and power.

The exhibition also features a new version of Deciphering Value II – Economic Anomalies and Unequal Dependencies in Global Community Trade. In this work, Dike investigates how value is produced, distributed, and circulated, while constructing an archive of her own.

Curator: Anna-Karin Wulgué

Press preview: August 27, 11.00–12.00. The artist and the Artistic Director will be present. We will offer lunch at Färgfabriken’s café following the viewing. Please RSVP your interest to beatrice@fargfabriken.se
Exhibition period: August 29–November 22
Vernissage: August 28, 17.00–20.00
Artist talk: August 29, 13.00–14.00 with Ramesch Daha, artist and current president of Secession, Vienna.
For more information, press images and interview requests (Ndidi Dike is available for interviews from 13–30 August):
beatrice@fargfabriken.se

About the exhibition
In the exhibition Rare Earth Rare Justice, artist Ndidi Dike takes extraction of earth minerals and people as her starting point. A new sculptural work Deciphering Value II: Economic Anomalies and Unequal Dependencies in Global Commodity Trade is presented in an installation created uniquely for Färgfabriken’s main exhibition hall.

Rare Earth Rare Justice is the first presentation of Ndidi Dike’s artistic work in Sweden. In her practice, she works primarily as a sculptor and multidisciplinary artist. She often experiments with found objects, prints, spatial installations, and architectural interventions in the exhibition environment. Dike’s artistry is characterized by a deep engagement with contemporary socio-political and economic concerns, with a particular focus on how colonialism, post colonialism, and global capitalism have shaped contemporary urban cultures and landscapes.

About the artist
As one of Nigeria’s most prominent artists, Dike explores themes such as the history of the enslaved, personal and collective archives, ecological devastation, and how global extractive industries lead to resource-driven conflicts, displacement, and human disasters.

Dike’s work is often preceded by long, research-based processes in which the choice of materials is guided by the specific theme of each project. Her art is characterized by a strong materiality – where the objects’ previous economic, social, and political lives carry symbolism, references, and concrete weight. By combining materials, images, and references from different cultural contexts, central to here practice is an engagement with Africa and it’s nations with a particular focus on the DRC, and other contested spaces, situated within complex discourses of post-colonial exploitation, global inequality, gender subordination, displacement and territorial conflict. Dike highlights historical events and intertwined narratives that still shape the present.

The exhibition has been made possible through a co-production with Secession in Vienna and Zachęta in Warsaw.