Okay Ikenegbu is an art historian, academic, sculptor and curator whose research and practice engage contemporary art history, material culture, and practice-based enquiry, with particular emphasis on decolonial and Global Majority perspectives, monumentality, public space, and metal-based technologies. He holds a PhD in Art History, a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture, a Bachelor of Arts in Fine and Applied Arts, and has over three decades of experience in higher education as a teacher, researcher, and academic leader.

Ikenegbu has held senior leadership roles in Fine Art higher education and has contributed significantly to the development of art history, studio practice, and research culture within large, studio-based institution. He is a Fellow of the Pan-African Circle of Artists and the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors (UK), and a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Sculptors Association of Nigeria (ScAN). He has played key leadership roles in the formation and consolidation of national art and cultural organisations, including the Sculptors Guild of Nigeria (SGN), SNA, and ScAN.

His research integrates art-historical scholarship and critical theory, with particular focus on African modernism. This includes sculptural practice, with sculpture functioning as both subject and method of enquiry. His work has evolved from early archetypal forms toward a symbolic and conceptually open language that draws on myth, spirituality, and material intelligence to explore memory, belief, and civic identity. Across his practice, sculpture operates as a mode of research into the relationship between form, environment, and public meaning.

Ikenegbu has published scholarly writing, delivered invited keynote lectures, and participated in international conferences, exhibitions, and research-led curatorial projects. His recent solo exhibition, After the Rain (2022), presented large-scale outdoor works that examined the convergence of sculpture, landscape, and environmental design.

His public commissions range from intimate metal works to major monumental sculptures in prominent civic spaces. Notable projects include Roaring Lion King (2020), recognised as the world’s largest lion sculpture, Eagle (2009), a monumental metal sculpture at Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, and the FIFA/COCA-COLA World Youth Championship Nigeria ’95 mascot sculptures, which he led as Project Director. Together, these works reflect a sustained engagement with sculpture as research, public memory, and cultural form.