Ikwe na odu is a six-hour performance installation that invites audiences to consider the labor of food production.

This performance was presented as part of Art, Activism and Food symposium: 

A series of performative provocations that tackle the use of food as a weapon of warfare

How is food used as a weapon of warfare? Through a series of performative provocations, the Theater Program’s fall production speaks to food politics in relation to the impact on the environment, economics, and identity.

Ikwe na odu [Igbo for “mortar and pestle”] is a six-hour performance installation conceived and directed by Chinasa Vivian Ezugha that invites audiences to consider the labor of food production. In addition to the performance installation, there will be a symposium, Art, Activism and Food; performance practice and food politics that invites artists from the global south and U.K. and the NYUAD and UAE community to respond to themes around activism, performance, and food.

NYU Abu Dhabi currently chairs the Universities Climate Network, which comprises UAE-based universities and higher education institutions to facilitate dialogues, workshops, public events, policy briefs, and youth participation in the lead up to and beyond COP28. Presented in support of COP28.

Presented as part of the lead-up to COP28

From the director 

In 1967 Nigeria entered a civil war which till this day continues to shape the cultures and communities residing in what we know as Nigeria today. During this period of civil unrest, the British government embarked on a mission to

destroy the Igbo people of Southern Nigeria, using a type of weapon that one might never imagine to be a weapon. This weapon was food or rather the destruction of food and the ultimate starvation of many Igbos known at the time as Biafrans.

Today we are living in a world where food insecurity remains at the top of the agenda. The UN’s Global Report on Food Crises in 2023 estimates that over a quarter of a billion people were acutely food-insecure and required urgent

food assistance in 58 food-crisis countries/ territories in 2022. This is the highest number in the seven-year history of the GRFC.

As artists we are compelled to bring this topic to the foreground, to use performance art to speak up about the conditions surrounding food insecurity, and use our art to activate spaces where justice around climate change and food can be experienced as something live and real.