NAHOUS, Federal Palace Hotel, 10 – 11 July, 2025

Curated By Sosa Omorogbe

This exhibition brings together contemporary Nigerian artists who navigate the porous boundaries between the past and the present, engaging inherited symbols, stories, and visual languages as raw material for transformation. Here, “Code-switching”, a linguistic practice of shifting between different presentations or modes of communicating oneself, becomes a metaphor for these artists ability to speak to multiple realities and times at once.

In Orin Akoko (Songs of The Past), Okotor assemble a living sonic archive from Nigeria’s diverse musical traditions; Highlife, Sakara, Waka, Ijaw rhythms and Apala each genre carrying with it histories of migration, celebration, resistance, and spirituality. The composition unfolds as both a listening experience and a cultural excavation. It asks: What can sound remember? What stories lies in rhythms, tone, or silence.

Okotor resists the commodification of African heritage, offering instead an intimate, non-linear encounter with the past. His sonic layering blurs time and place, drawing the listener into a deeper engagement with shared memory. Here, music becomes both portal and protest, capable of nurturing emotional and cultural repair. In his hands, deep listening becomes a form of care, a way to honour what was, name what persists, and tune into what we risk forgetting.