Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh describes Lagos State of Mind III (2017/2020) as “a real and invented world in which the viewer is invited to look at Lagos through Berlin’s eye and vice versa.” This installation brings together field recordings made by the artist in these two cities, both of which he’s called home, over the past decade. The soundscape highlights specific aspects of daily life in those locales: car horns, engine roars, street music, voice-over announcements from Berlin’s train system, and conversations between African expatriates in introductory German. Connecting sound and place,
In collaboration with the Moody Center for the Arts and Astral Brewing, Ogboh created a stout-based beer inspired by cultural narratives of people of Nigerian descent in Houston, Texas. The flavor of the beer is based on research the artist conducted in preparation for the project. Asking people from the Nigerian community how they would describe the flavor of Houston, and to what degree Nigerian culture has influenced food, fashion, and music, Ogboh collated various responses to inform his artistic concept for the beer. The qualifying notes of spicy, smoky,
The experimental artist pens another immersive techno love letter to Lagos, enriched with field recordings that evoke the fast-beating heart of the city. Share For the installation artist turned experimental techno producer Emeka Ogboh, there's no place like Lagos. "Be it vehicular sounds (especially car horns), the cries of itinerant hawkers, multilingual conversations, power generators and even the birds, there is a certain quality to the audio level, frequency and intensity [of Lagos]," he wrote in issue 462 of The Wire magazine. The Berlin-based artist's second album, 6°30'33.372"N 3°22'0.66"E, released
by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi. Emeka Ogboh’s multi-sensory practice considers what the late Senegalese humanist Alioune Diop referred to as Presence Africain, the necessity to affirm the history and humanity of the African person on the global stage following centuries of negation by Western imperialism. Since moving to Berlin in 2014, Ogboh has explored the cartography of the African presence in Europe through tangible and intangible cultural artefacts such as language, gastronomy, memory, and more recently, African objects in exile. In late 2020, he partnered with Dresden’s Museum für Völkerkunde on
A gustatory experience by Emeka Ogboh in collaboration with BRLO for the exhibition Ámà: The Gathering Place at Gropius Bau, Berlin. Available at Beba restaurant & BRLO Berlin.