Biography
Nigerian sound and video artist Emeka Ogboh constructs intricate soundscapes from field recordings as a way to interpret urban spaces and globalized settings. Lagos, Nigeria’s crowded capital, stands as his central focus, with extensive captures of the metropolis appearing in exhibitions across continents from Helsinki and Berlin to Houston and Washington, D.C. Beginning in 2018, Ogboh started incorporating musical elements into these sonic environments, issuing his first album, Beyond the Yellow Haze. Two years later came 6'30'33.372N 3'22'0.66E, an entire record devoted to one Lagos bus station.
After completing graphic design studies at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, Ogboh initially concentrated on visual forms. A 2008 workshop led by Austrian multimedia artist Harald Scherz at Egypt’s Fayoum Winter Academy sparked his engagement with sound, prompting him to treat Lagos’s ambient layers as an orchestral whole. His unaltered recordings document varied aspects of daily existence in the city and other sites he has documented. While museums usually house the pieces inside dedicated listening stations, outdoor presentations in Cologne and Helsinki have projected them directly into public thoroughfares. Lagos by Bus, among his best-known projects, assembles the interior noise of danfos—the city’s shared taxis—within an installation modeled on one of the vehicles themselves. Sociopolitical themes recur, occasionally through archival material, as in The Ambivalence of 1960. During the 2010s his installations appeared at venues in Venice, Bremen, Cleveland, and Brooklyn; a 2017 work at Tate Modern, London, earned a nomination for the Hugo Boss Prize.
That same year Ogboh issued his debut musical project on the German label A-Ton. Beyond the Yellow Haze merged Lagos field recordings with ambient electronics and dance music. For the follow-up, he narrowed the lens to Ojuelegba, a historic shrine turned bustling transit hub, resulting in the 2022 album 6'30'33.372N 3'22'0.66E.
After completing graphic design studies at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, Ogboh initially concentrated on visual forms. A 2008 workshop led by Austrian multimedia artist Harald Scherz at Egypt’s Fayoum Winter Academy sparked his engagement with sound, prompting him to treat Lagos’s ambient layers as an orchestral whole. His unaltered recordings document varied aspects of daily existence in the city and other sites he has documented. While museums usually house the pieces inside dedicated listening stations, outdoor presentations in Cologne and Helsinki have projected them directly into public thoroughfares. Lagos by Bus, among his best-known projects, assembles the interior noise of danfos—the city’s shared taxis—within an installation modeled on one of the vehicles themselves. Sociopolitical themes recur, occasionally through archival material, as in The Ambivalence of 1960. During the 2010s his installations appeared at venues in Venice, Bremen, Cleveland, and Brooklyn; a 2017 work at Tate Modern, London, earned a nomination for the Hugo Boss Prize.
That same year Ogboh issued his debut musical project on the German label A-Ton. Beyond the Yellow Haze merged Lagos field recordings with ambient electronics and dance music. For the follow-up, he narrowed the lens to Ojuelegba, a historic shrine turned bustling transit hub, resulting in the 2022 album 6'30'33.372N 3'22'0.66E.
Albums
