Artist Emeka Ogboh works across a variety of mediums that prioritize specific sensorial involvement: he connects to places with his senses of hearing and taste. Through his audio installations and gastronomic works, Ogboh explores how private, public, and collective memories and histories are translated, transformed, and encoded into sound and food.
His artworks contemplate how auditory and gustatory experiences 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. Recently, Ogboh has also started experimenting with the sense of smell.
Ogboh has participated in numerous international exhibitions including documenta 14, (Athens and Kassel, 2017), Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), the 56th edition of La Biennale di Venezia (2015), and Dakar Biennale (2014).
As a mentor, Ogboh is interested in applicants who are experimental and bold in their artistic practices and are open to engaging with the sensorial—especially the auditory, olfactory, and gustatory. Artists already active in these fields as well as ones who want to begin exploring these senses within their current practices are encouraged to apply. He is also seeking nominees whose practice is research-based, and who focus on themes related to migration, immigration, and post-colonialism. “Projects that are heavily invested in research as part of their process would stand out for me during the selection,” he says. Potential mentees should expect a hands-on approach and interaction from concept to finish. “I am interested in how concepts develop and materialize into finished work. I will be bringing my years of experience and research to the table, and I would like to see this process as a journey of new discoveries, not just for the candidates, but for me as well.”
Watch the video statement to find out more about what Ogboh is looking for in applications:
Artist Timothy Lee proposes an investigation and deconstruction of the titular national Korean dish that balances distinctly Korean flavors with American goods introduced during the United States’s military presence and occupation in South Korea. Army Base Stew (Budae jjigae) is a multisensory performance and gustatory experience that examines the idea of national dishes within a postcolonial narrative, and questions how histories of invasion, migration, and assimilation weave flavors and memories into the food we eat. His themes of concern include fermentation as survival, “smelly” ethnic cuisines, and the gastronomic legacies of the American occupation.
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Composer and sound artist Iman Jesmi delves into the correlation between sounds and smells in European cities, and how they have shifted through immigration. With Luca Turin’s theory in mind—that receptors in the nose respond to the vibrations of a molecule—he plays with the notion that both auditory and olfactory systems are based on vibrations. Focusing on Berlin, Jesmi aims to produce a radio series using original and archival field recordings, interviews, and electronic music to narrate and question the city’s sound- and smellscape. The research will also be collected in a sound-and-smell map of the German capital, tracing its transformations throughout history.
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Odors often offer a communal remembering that’s richer and more complex than the histories established by Western archiving formats. Since olfactory memory cannot be erased through the violence and theft of colonialism, Woman (of) Substance proposes an exploration of the olfactory memories of motherhood, womanhood, nationhood, and the ruptures in traditional knowledge formed in the postcolony. What can the scents and textures of one woman’s life tell us about an entire nation? Artist Awuor Onyango explores how much of Kenya’s history can be uncovered through their mother’s personal history of scents. Find out more
