The disparate nature of contemporary urban realities, shaped by migratory flows and the ongoing effects of globalisation, is at the heart of Emeka Ogboh's work.

What do we hear in this installation? A voice. Or rather the same voice divided in two, here and there. It speaks in numbers and names, going through places one by one as if we were on a journey, actually a collective journey. And yet nothing moves. As we move gently around the room, as we approach the boxes hanging like paintings on the walls, we realize that the voices are coming from there, that the black circles in the middle of the yellow wooden planks are loudspeakers, which we can see vibrating if we move a bit closer. Two lively, eloquent tableaux inhabited by a voice that travels from one place to another, crossing landscapes that we have to deduce from the names spoken. On either side of the central circles, two parallel black lines divide the yellow wooden planks in half. This is the distinguishing feature of the buses that run between Lagos, Nigeria’s capital and a megalopolis port, and the neighboring country of Niger. From Lagos to Niamey, the Niger’s capital, there are almost 1,200 kilometers of road and an entire country to cross. The voice is that of a bus driver. And we understand that this voice is our guide on this motionless journey. The names of the places being called out are the stages of the journey. For those who are used to making the journey, they are colorful images fed by memories. For those from elsewhere, they are words in a foreign language, Yoruba, but if we linger long enough, the meaningless chain becomes a litany, an involuntary case of sound poetry – Bernard Heidsieck’s La Poinçonneuse suddenly comes to mind, and the stations of the Paris metro are superimposed on those of the Nigerian buses.

Bastien Gallet, 2024