In ‘Passage, a song’, photography becomes an act of listening as Akinbode Akinbiyi and Abrie Fourie trace memory, movement and political imagination through Burkina Faso.
9 September 2026
What does it mean to listen to a place through images? ‘Passage, a song’ brings together Berlin-based artists Akinbode Akinbiyi and Abrie Fourie in a photographic dialogue shaped by walking, observation, and attentive encounters with place.
Developed during a 2021 residency in Burkina Faso, the travelling exhibition emerged from the artists’ movements through the streets of Ouagadougou and the surrounding landscapes of Outbrenga Province. Created during a period of growing political uncertainty, the photographs resist spectacle, turning instead towards the subtle details and everyday rhythms through which histories persist.
Working independently yet in conversation, Akinbiyi and Fourie explore photography’s relationship to sound, memory, and political imagination. Their images register gestures, streets, landscapes and fleeting encounters, revealing how the ordinary can carry the weight of collective experience.
Throughout ‘Passage, a song‘, traces of cultural memory and the enduring legacy of Thomas Sankara surface alongside quieter observations of contemporary life. Photography becomes less a means of fixing a place than a way of moving through it, listening closely to what remains, what changes and what continues to resonate.
This exhibition will be on view at Javett-UP, Pretoria, on 17 September 2026.
