The “Statues Also Breathe” Art Exhibition Honours Nigeria’s Missing Chibok Girls

It’s been 12 years since the Chibok school abduction; the story is still unfinished.

In April 2014, hundreds of schoolgirls were taken from their school in Chibok, Borno State, in a kidnapping that drew global attention. Twelve years later, some have returned home, but around 100 are still missing. Their names may not appear in the news every day, yet the need to remember them remains.

That is the starting point for “Statues Also Breathe”, an art exhibition that uses sculpture to keep their memory visible.

The exhibition was created by French artist Prune Nourry in collaboration with Nigerian musician and activist Ade Bantu, students from Obafemi Awolowo University, and a community of women potters from Ilorin. Together, they created a body of work that keeps the girls’ stories visible and encourages continued remembrance.

At the centre of the exhibition are 108 clay portraits inspired by the famous 15th-century Ife heads. Each sculpture was modelled using photographs provided by the girls’ mothers. The works do not simply represent anonymous figures; they carry the likenesses of daughters, sisters, and children whose absence is still deeply felt.

Nourry has described the project as a way of restoring visibility to lives that risk being reduced to statistics. In interviews about the exhibition, she explained that the portraits were created from the mothers’ photographs so that the girls could be remembered as individuals rather than numbers.

That idea is what makes the exhibition so powerful. The sculptures preserve more than faces; they preserve memory. They insist that the missing girls remain present in public consciousness.

The exhibition also reminds us that art can be a powerful medium for remembrance, storytelling, and collective memory. A sculpture cannot bring someone home, but it can keep a story from disappearing. It can hold attention, spark conversation, and encourage people to remember long after headlines have faded.

The title itself feels important. Statues are often seen as silent objects, but this exhibition suggests otherwise. These sculptures seem to breathe through the stories attached to them: the mothers who shared photographs, the artists who shaped the clay, and the communities that continue to remember.

In a country where news cycles move quickly, remembering can become an act of care. “Statues Also Breathe” reminds us that memory matters, and that art can help carry stories across time.

Twelve years later, the exhibition asks a simple but urgent question: How do we keep remembering those who are still missing?

For the artists behind “Statues Also Breathe”, the answer begins with refusing to let their faces disappear.