‘Hublot is known for collaborating with artists,’ says Leonard Iheagwam, a visual artist, designer and skateboarder who was born in Lagos and works from London, and also goes by the sobriquet Soldier. ‘They have done Jeff Koons, Murakami, Daniel Arsham… the best of the best.’
Issued as a limited edition of 50 models, the launch of the 42mm Hublot Big Bang Soldier All Black today means that Iheagwam has been added to the Swiss watchmaker’s fold of artistic collaborators. ‘My career is not early on but I am quite young and it's quite new, and they took that chance with me,’ he says.
Soldier and Hublot first joined forces in 2024, then in the form of an exhibition of the artist’s work at the watchmaker’s London boutique during Frieze. A bond was forged, and resulted in the two year making of the Big Bang Soldier All Black.
The timepiece’s shape and volume remains true to the Big Bang model Hublot first issued in 2005. Here, the case and bezel have been made from black ceramic that is either polished to a glossy black or has been microblasted, to achieve a playful blend of matt and high-shine elements.
Soldier’s motifs have been added through Pad printing, an offset gravure printing technique used to transfer a two-dimensional image onto textured, three-dimensional surfaces.
In all black, the watch comes with ablack fabric straps and two optional rubber straps. The latter two are lined in red and in green, colours that to Soldier represent present and past, respectively. ‘You don’t want to simply decorate something that already has its own language and history,’ says the artist of putting his stamp on Hublot’s much-quoted design. ‘You want to understand it, respect what already exists, and then find a way of introducing another story into it.’