Emeka Ogboh
Emeka Ogboh connects to places with his senses of hearing and taste. Through his audio installations and gastronomic works, he explores how private, public, collective memories and histories are translated, transformed, and encoded into sound and food. These works contemplate how sound and food capture existential relationships, frame our understanding of the world, and provide a context in which to ask critical questions on immigration, globalization, and post-colonialism.
His solo exhibitions include B(l)ackroom (Galerie Imane Farès, Paris, 2026); The Song of the Germans (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, USA, 2026; The Power Plant, Toronto, 2018); ABJ (SOMETHING Art Space, Abidjan, 2024); Der Kosmos – Things Fall Apart (Humboldt Forum, Berlin, 2022); Stirring the Pot (Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, 2021); Song of the Union (Talbot Rice Gallery / Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh, 2021); The Way Earthly Things are Going (Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, 2020; Tate Modern, London, 2017); Ámà, the Gathering Place (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2019); No Condition is Permanent (Galerie Imane Farès, Paris, 2018); If Found Please Return to Lagos (Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 2017); and Market Symphony (Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C., 2016).
His work has also been presented in numerous group exhibitions, notably at Moderna Museet Malmö and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde (The Sound of, 2026), the 36th São Paulo Biennial (2025), the Folkestone Triennial (2025), Völklinger Hütte (The True Size of Africa, 2024–2025), the Musée de l’Homme, Paris (Migrations, une odyssée humaine, 2024–2025), the Saint Louis Art Museum (Narrative Wisdom and African Arts, 2024–2025), the 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024), Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (A Collection for the 21st Century, 2023), Museum Tinguely, Basel (À bruit secret – Hearing in Art, 2023), MoMA, New York (Collection 1980s–Present, 2022–2023), the 14th Sharjah Biennial (2019), Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), documenta 14 (Athens and Kassel, 2017), and the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). He is taking part in Aux origines, a travelling group exhibition conceived by the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration (2026–2031).
Emeka Ogboh is the co-founder of the Video Art Network Lagos. He received the Böttcherstraße Prize in Bremen in 2016 and was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2018. In 2019, he shared the Sharjah Biennial 14 Prize with Otobong Nkanga. In 2026, he was among the laureates of the CHANEL Next Prize.
His works are held in collections including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate (London), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), MCA Chicago, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington, D.C.), the Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bonn), and the Fonds d’art contemporain – Paris Collections.