ewsba.se
Swiss luxury watchmaker Hublot is expanding its roster of artist collaborations. Its latest partnership is with Soldier (born Leonard Iheagwam), a Nigerian-born, London-based visual artist, designer and skateboarder.
Soldier has created 50 timepieces for Hublot in black ceramic and black-plated titanium adorned with little toy sliders and a cross. They’re a recurring motif in the artist’s work, which he first debuted in 2024 with Angelica Mara Jopling of Incubator. The dial of the 42 mm chronograph features more toy soldiers inside the dial and bezel. The collaboration with Hublot has been two years in the making, with products starting at £22,900 ($30,303).
“The collaboration came together really organically. I was invited to the Daniel Arsham collaboration preview in 2024 and at the time I had made a few paintings that needed a space to preview, Hublot let me do it in their London store, which led to them asking me to do create a London watch,” Soldier told ARTnews during a preview at the Hublot store on New Bond Street.
Soldier says the process of designing the timepiece was “the same” as painting, invoking Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), in the sense that that both objects are “ready-made.”
“A watch is already an object, which has thought behind it, and so the process is quite simple,” said Soldier. He first visited the brand’s Swiss headquarters to witness the watchmaking process. “Art and watches are not mass-produced items, there are actual engineers who work on creating such a piece,” he said, adding that he never wore a watch growing up. He now ears a Hublot, engraved with prhase, “artist proof.”
The toy soldiers in the watch and in Soldier’s artwork are a nod to the artist’s upbringing in Nigeria, and the cross symbolism links to his father, who is a reverend: “We didn’t really come from a lot of money, and growing up, I used to skateboard wearing camouflage clothing, so I had a lot of run-ins with the police and army because civilians weren’t allowed to wear camouflage because of the civil war.
He moved to England in 2019, and his work today draws deeply on his adolescence. His solo exhibition at Jopling, titled “When The Saints Go Marching,” featured paintings inspired by memories of the war, as well as more nostalgic scenes: religious iconography and portraits of his family.
Soldier teased that he’s working on a “big” show for 2028 without revealing the name of the institution. He called the secret upcoming show “very important” because within the Nigerian creative scene. From his perspective, there visual art hasn’t taken off to the same degree as the fashion industry, citing Lagos Fashion Week.
“I didn’t grow up thinking I could be a painter, neither could my parents. I’ve only been showing work for the past three years,” said Soldier, who now counts art world figures like Charlie Gosling, Lorenzo Amos and Robert Nava as friends.