Song of the Union: Emeka Ogboh (Paperback)

Emeka Ogboh (b. 1977, Enugu, Nigeria) currently lives and works between Lagos and Berlin. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions most recently at Gropius Bau, Berlin (2021); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (2019); The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2018); Imane Fares Gallery, Paris (2018). Ogboh’s work is part of the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, France; Sharjah Biennale; MMK Frankfurt; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Tate Modern, London; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Federal Republic of Germany and Le FRAC Centre- Val de Loire, France. Ogboh is a founding member and director of Video Art Network Lagos.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and the artistic director of sonsbeek20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Ndikung was the curator-at-large for Adam Szymczyk’s documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany in 2017; a guest curator of the Dak’Art biennale in Dakar, Senegal, in 2018; and the artistic director of the 12th Bamako Encounters photography biennial in Mali in 2019. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he curated the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. He is currently a Professor in the Spatial Strategies MA programme at the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin and is also a recipient of the first OCAD University International Curators Residency fellowship in Toronto in 2020.

Tessa Giblin is the Director of Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh, where she holds a Personal Chair in Contemporary Curating with Edinburgh College of Art. She has recently curated solo exhibitions of Angelica Mesiti, Emeka Ogboh, Samson Young, Lucy Skaer, David Claerbout and Jesse Jones. She was commissioner and curator of Jesse Jones’ Tremble Tremble for Ireland at the 57th Biennale di Venezia (2017), which has since continued to tour internationally. She is part of the acquisitions committee of the Frac Bretagne 2020–2022, and from 2006–2016 was Curator of Project Arts Centre in Dublin, Ireland.

Melissa MacRobert is Deputy Director at Talbot Rice Gallery. With a focus on project management, artist commissions, research and touring - she has produced exhibitions with Angelica Mesiti, Emeka Ogboh, Samson Young, Myriam Lefkowitz and Lucy Skaer in addition to various major international group exhibitions including The Normal, Pine’s Eye, Borderlines and At the Gates. She was co-editor of Emeka Ogboh Song of the Union (Talbot Rice Gallery, 2021) and has co-ordinated a number of artist publications including Ken Price A Survey of Sculptures and Drawings (H&W Publishers/DelMonico Prestel, 2017); Guillermo Kuitca (H&W Publishers/Snoeck, 2016); Phyllida Barlow Fifty Years of Drawings (JRP Ringier, 2014); Takesada Matsutani A Matrix (JRP Ringier, 2013).

M. J. Grant is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Music at the University of Edinburgh. Her research in the sociology and historical anthropology of music includes work on the social functions of songs and singing, music in Scotland and the musicology of
war and violence. She has also published extensively on the theory and aesthetics of avant-garde and experimental music since 1950. She is a member of the Editorial and Advisory board of the Musica Scotica Trust. Her second book Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture, is forthcoming from Open Book Publishers.