Emeka Ogboh presents sound installation ‘Market Symphony’ in National Museum of African Art in Washington, from February 3, 2016 on.
About Ogboh
Emeka Ogboh is a graduate of the Fine and Applied Arts Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who works primarily with sound and video to explore ways of understanding cities as cosmopolitan spaces with their unique characters. His work contemplates broad notions of listening and hearing as its main focus. Recently, Ogboh has begun to explore audio archives, with an interest in history, and how nostalgia and memory intersect in the conceptualization of the present.
He has exhibited both in Nigeria and in several international venues. They include, the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Venice, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos; Dak’Art Biennale, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Whitworth and Manchester city galleries; MassMoca Massachusetts; Museum of Contemporary Arts Kiasma, Helsinki and Rauternstrauch-Joset-Museum, Cologne.
Ogboh is a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) 2014 grant recipient, and the co-founder of the Video Art Network Lagos.
He won the competition to produce a commissioned artwork for the Peace and Security building of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2015.(text website artist)
Oshodi Stock Exchange, 2014.
About the exhibition:
Ogboh Brings Nigerian “Open Air” Market to Museum in Unique Sound-Art Exhibition
Emeka Ogboh’s “Market Symphony” exhibition will be open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, through Sept. 24, 2016. Commissioned by the museum, Ogboh’s site-specific sound-artwork draws on the commercial cries and urban ambiance of Balogun—a sprawling open-air market in Lagos, Nigeria, Africa’s largest and most populated city. The artist invites museum visitors to experience the distinctive sounds of this vibrant Nigerian metropolis and the traders who drive its daily economy.
The Song of the Germans, his installation in the Venice Biennial 2015.
The Song of the Germans, 2015.
“‘Market Symphony’ will be the first work of sound art to be featured in the museum,” said Karen E. Milbourne, curator at the Museum of African Art. “This multisensory work of art by an emerging global talent will transport visitors across the Atlantic and be accessible to the visually impaired and other audiences who have less opportunity to enjoy our museum.”
In “Market Symphony,” Ogboh records the distinctive sounds of Nigeria’s sprawling, thriving metropolis Lagos in order to reconstruct the experience of its dynamic spaces and urban ambiance. Visitors will hear the voices of traders advertising their goods and calling out for potential customers, the sounds of bantering between buyers and sellers and the overall bustle of Lagos’ major markets.
Speakers will be mounted on colorful enamelware trays commonly used for displaying goods at stalls in markets like Balogun. Laden with food and other goods, these trays are also popular with itinerant hawkers who weave through Lagos’ busy streets while balancing their wares upon their heads. Whether concealed beneath merchandise or navigating crowded streets, the trays lend to the color, chaos and creativity characteristic of the symphony of rhythms at Balogun and other markets. Women and hawkers will call from all sides against the backdrop of horns, footsteps and city living to transport museum goers from the hush of a gallery to a commercial hive approximately 5,400 miles away. (text website museum)
Verbal Mapping, South Africa, 2012.
“The market is a melting pot of socio-economic activities where you’ll find people from different ethnic, religious and social backgrounds, converging and interacting through buying and selling. Here you can hear the different languages and dialects in Nigeria being spoken, during the exchanges between the buyers and sellers. I do find the constant buzz of trading very interesting to record. The traders calling out their wares and hustling potential customers, the movements of goods from one spot to the other, the crowds pressing against each other as they squeeze through the narrow lanes between the shops, the constant chattering and gossiping between the shop owners as they while away time. The energy the market place exudes is quite overwhelming and can be sensed in the sound recordings made there. It’s indeed the heart and soul of cities.” (Statement artist)