Ugonna Hosten: The Song I Once Knew is a mediation between the unconscious, and conscious action, featuring recent and new intricately detailed, largely chiaroscuro drawings in charcoal, graphite and gouache. Scaled between the panoramic and intimate, scenarios of ritual, worship, acceptance and transformation are presented, and we witness the departures and arrivals of Hosten's Heroine on her pilgrimage, accompanied by her biomorphic, spirit guide, Ebezina.
In the Upper Gallery, My Mother's Decree: See The Tail of the Kite (2023), dramatically defines a coda - a visual summary and key to some of the recurring motifs across the exhibition. In this establishing scene, the Heroine is directed by the Great Mother on a journey to follow the guidance and flight path of the Kite, a bird unseen to us at first, but who makes its presence known later in other works. The composition holds together Hosten's understanding of how the realms of the personal unconscious and consciousness might meet and inform a life journey of challenges, transformations and self-realisation as being experienced by the artist. Drawings reference the pilgrim's intentions, with objects supporting meditations or prayers in preparation for the transformative journey. A commemorative draping of shed snakeskin in Ala's Revelation (2024) envisioning growth and new possibilities. Transformation is also suggested and echoed in the appearance of the deity, Pearl Maiden (2025) the goddess' presence, an assemblage of alchemical and man-made aggregations. We capture the Heroine being led up a stairway hand in hand with Ebezina to cross a threshold, in Songs of The Unfurling (2025).
Downstairs in the lower gallery, one arrives to a location resembling a lakeside grove. The scenes we witness here are intimate and communal as presented by the works, In The Wake of Our Daughter's Becoming (2023), A Call Answered (2024) and The Fluency of Isato (2024) featuring a celebrant community of dancers and musicians celebrating her acceptance and onward journey with Ebezina at the water's shoreline
Ugonna Hosten lives and works in Kent, UK. She is a multi-disciplinary artist working across media encompassing collage, drawing, assemblage and printmaking. With a particular interest in the nature of the Self, She has been engaging a process that she describes as, "broadening and deepening a felt sense of the transpersonal dimension", a spiritual awakening and foundation of a meditative practice that is taking her to new sites within, and uniting different fields of knowledge that includes philosophy, comparative mythologies, analytical depth psychology (specifically Carl Jung and Fanny Brewster), alchemy and the ancient spiritual traditions of the igbos.
Recent Exhibitions include; What I Thought I Knew, curated by Ronan McKenzie, Bernie Grant Arts Centre, London, UK (group - 2024);chi: Altarpieces, Liturgy & Devotion (Drawing attention: emerging artists in dialogue), York Art Gallery, York, UK (2023); Instinctive Travels & The Paths of Rhythm, One Paved Court, London, UK (solo - 2022); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, UK (group - 2021); Ty Pawb Print International, Wales, UK (group - 2021); Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, London, UK (2021), and Humanalia(n), One Paved Court, London, UK (group - 2020).
Since her debut solo exhibition in 2022, Hosten has continued to explore and develop a mythical tale of a female protagonist on a pilgrimage guided by a divine entity.
