Collection 1980s–Present

212

Emeka Ogboh’s Lagos State of Mind III

Dec 2, 2022–Aug 6, 2023

MoMA

Emeka Ogboh. Lagos State of Mind III. 2017/2020. Eighteen-channel sound installation (35:25 min.), painted wall, galvanized steel and aluminum street sign, U-Bahn metro sign, concrete slab, and vinyl wall graphic. Fund for the Twenty-First Century. © 2022 Emeka Ogboh
  • MoMA, Floor 2, 212

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, this auditory collage explores how collective memory and histories of globalization are encoded and transmitted. A fictional transit map on the walls imagines a version of Berlin public transportation that connects to bus stops and transportation hubs in Lagos. Layering sonic landscapes and visual languages of movement, this work sits at the intersection of two worlds inhabited by an immigrant.

Organized by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Steven and Lisa Tananbaum
Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, and Martha Joseph, The Phyllis Ann and Walter Borten Assistant Curator, with Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance.

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