Publication based on an exhibition of work by Nigerian-British photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi and South African artist Abrie Fourie both based in Berlin, and curatorial collaboration between Musée de la Musique Georges Ouédraogo, Ouagadougou, and Der Projektraum Scharaun, Berlin. The curatorial emphasis turns the focus to the idea of sound in photography (soundtrack composition by Boris Baltschun).
What do we hear? Can we hear the stories that emanate from the visual information? Are we projecting from our memories or closing our ears to the cries? Can we hear the noise of the place or the deafening silence? What is the sound we hear in silence? In December 2021, Akinbode Akinbiyi and Abrie Fourie, in the run-up to a coup d'état in Burkina Faso, the artists worked parallel on a photographic investigation of the geography and social topography of Oubritenga & Ouagadougou—considering the dreams manifested by Thomas Sankara then and the reality of the economic malaise of the 21st century. Thomas Sankara is considered "Africa's Che Guevara". Despite Sankara's assassination (1987), the belief in revolutionary renewal is ever present in Burkina Faso. Through this Sankara lens, the project and collaboration listen and meditate on his heritage.
Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946 in Oxford) is a Nigerian-British photographer, author and curator. Akinbiyi´s primary photographic focus is large, sprawling megacities. Wandering and meandering the
highways and byways in an attempt to understand and deeply engage with the modern metropolis, mainly in Africa, but also in Europe, North and South America. He has become known as one of the internationally renowned representatives of photography in Africa.
Abrie Fourie (born 1969 in Pretoria, South Africa) bases his practice mainly on photography and engages in teaching, publishing, and curatorial projects. His approach to image-making is "less about determining a place than about circling the relationship between spaces, signs and the self, referring to the quiet tension between absence and presence, abstraction and reality."
