Passage – a song. bring die Berlyn-gesetelde kunstenaars Akinbode Akinbiyi (Nigerië) en Abrie Fourie (Suid-Afrika) byeen in ’n dialoog waarin hulle oor plek, herinnering en luister besin. Die projek het ontstaan in Desember 2021 tydens hul kunstenaarsverblyf te Operndorf Afrika – die operadorpie gekonseptualiseer deur Christoph Schlingensief en ontwerp deur Francis Kéré, naby Ziniaré, Burkina Faso. Hul verblyf het oorvleuel met toenemende politieke onstabiliteit in die aanloop tot die 2022-staatsgreep. Dit het die agtergrond geskep vir hul artistieke ondersoek – hoe beelde stilte, ’n gemor, teenstand en herinnering kan vasvang.

The two artists worked both independently and in parallel across the regions of Oubritenga and Ouagadougou, focusing not on fixed stories, but on the atmospheres and thresholds that shape experience. Their resulting photographs are suspended between presence and absence, structure and abstraction. Through them, faint echoes of Thomas Sankara’s ideals, fragments of everyday life, and traces of built environments “speak” in the silence. The exhibition asks: Is it possible to listen through images? When we look, what do we truly hear?

Dit is eerder ’n uitnodiging as ’n optekening. Passage – a song. imagines photography as a form of receptive listening – a journey through cities, memories, and layered geographies. Together, Akinbiyi and Fourie build a shared register of attention and recollection, transforming the ordinary into the resonant and making the unsaid palpable.