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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ugonna Hosten, A call answered, 2024

Ugonna Hosten

A call answered, 2024
Charcoal on paper
Diptych, 159 x 230 cm
62 5/8 x 90 1/2 in
156 x 236.6 x 6 cm (framed)
61 3/8 x 93 1/8 x 2 3/8 in
UHO 003
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A Call Answered, is a moment of surrender on the heroine's journey-a conscious alignment with an inner calling. The narrative of the heroine's journey is partly autobiographical and pulls from...
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A Call Answered, is a moment of surrender on the heroine's journey-a conscious alignment with an inner calling.

The narrative of the heroine's journey is partly autobiographical and pulls from several pivotal moments from personal experience- parenthood, loss, the pandemic, and vocational shift.

Having attempted to pursue various career paths, the artistic practice asserted itself repeatedly creating a deeply felt sense of being summoned. Being in dialogue with the discomfort and attending to the places where that discomfort arose afforded the development of an ontological value system. A clear sighting of a north star that orientates energies around the act of making as a way of being.

There are two unified pairings in this drawing; the first is-

The female figure who represents the ego/consciousness & Ebezina the spirit aspect, the soul, instinctual nature.

The two, are halves of a whole and are united through the heroine’s reverent gesture of a genuflection.

The second is:
The horse-symbolic of libido (life energy) in unison with the heroine submits to the call with a bow. The heroine’s submission is backed with libido- the energy to actualise the undertaking of the journey.


The presence of the Kite (bird); which is symbolic of life in the Igbo cosmos, amplifies the life affirming act of answering to the call.

The image of the dancers is sourced from my father's funeral. I took several screenshots of a video I made on Day 2 of his funerary rites. Their performance felt like a celebration of life and I think it’s fitting to consider the source of the image as amplifying the idea of the act of surrender as being a simultaneous death and a birth-the dying of ego & the will-giving birth to a new way of being.
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Provenance

The artist

Exhibitions

Ugonna Hosten: The Song I Once Knew, 2 October - 1 November 2025, Tiwani Contemporary London
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