THIS TOO SHALL PASS

What does singing together mean in our society, especially in a pandemic and crisis-ridden world where music and art per se have long been silenced?

This summer, the internationally renowned Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh is transforming Frankfurt’s city centre into a soundscape on water and on land. At the centre of his three-part multi-channel sound installation THIS TOO SHALL PASS, which stretches from the across a raft-like boat on the Main to the Dreik nigskirche, is a newly composed hymn of the same name. Dedicated to the city and the year 2020, sung by choirs in Lagos and Frankfurt and woven into fabrics based on a centuries-old Igbo craft. Fixed sacred and profane places and the river as a flowing, collective city memory thereby expand into an overarching cosmopolitan space. Emeka Ogboh confronts current thinking about the migration of people and their cultural assets, about equality, participation and identity with the principle of cultural appropriation as a way of overcoming borders.

The artist plays with languages and codes, using different media and modes of expression. Through sensory experiences such as hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and feeling, Emeka Ogboh opens up cultural memory spaces. In his artworks, cooking and DJ performances, these memory spaces are sampled according to musical principles, their origins intertwined. At times, Emeka Ogboh draws on art-historical, even European imagery, while ultimately creating his own unique concepts. The political and human question of how we want to live together in the future stands above it all. In collaboration with freitagsküche, the accompanying programme TTSP is being created with city walks and talks, with film and music in the open air.

Emeka Ogboh’s most extensive in situ work in Europe to date was commissioned by the EKHN Stiftung in cooperation with the Kulturfonds RheinMain and made possible with the help of other sponsors.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS

artist: EMEKA OGBOH
images: Barbara Rademacher und Wolfgang Günzel
design: BUERO SANDRA DOELLER
place: Frankfurt/M
commissioner: EKHN Stiftung
supporters: Kulturfonds RheinMain, Deutsche Bank AG, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft, Crespo Foundation, Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft
cooperation partners: Freitagsküche Frankfurt
publication: THIS TOO SHALL PASS, Emeka Ogboh, Kerber Verlag, 2021
ISBN 978-3-7356-0826-0. 23
date: JULI – OKTOBER 2021
concept & realization: EUPHORIA