Have You Heard (first conceived in 1970 and revisited in 2010) is a poignant reflection on the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War.
Created in the immediate shadow of war, the work shifts the focus away from the battlefield and toward its human margins. Three women gather in animated conversation, their interaction giving the piece its title: Have you heard? They are positioned just outside the war zone around Asaba, where Nigerian soldiers had been camped—occupying that liminal space between violence and normalcy, uncertainty and relief.
Onobrakpeya understood that wars are not experienced only in combat. They reverberate through marketplaces, compounds, and whispered conversations. Here, the women become both witnesses and carriers of news. Their dialogue marks the psychological turning point, the moment when conflict gives way to the fragile possibility of peace.
Though the subject is heavy, the palette is radiant. Warm, sunlit tones and luminous colour fields replace the darkness one might expect from a war narrative. The brightness suggests transition: from anguish to optimism, from devastation to continuity. It is as though the artist is announcing that the guns have fallen silent and life, resilient as ever, resumes its rhythm.
The work also bears the imprint of Onobrakpeya’s fascination with textile traditions. Patterned surfaces enrich the composition, embedding cultural memory within the scene. These motifs soften the narrative without diminishing its gravity.
Across his broader civil war oeuvre, Onobrakpeya expressed a spectrum of emotions, anguish, mourning, displacement, and loss. In Have You Heard, however, the dominant note is not despair but release. The piece captures that quiet, almost disbelieving moment when people begin to speak of peace aloud.
It is not simply an artwork about war; it is an artwork about survival—and about the power of communal voices to signal the return of hope.