The artist was collecting material for a sonic and sculptural installation that will be presented in the Nigeria Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. The event, one of the art world’s most important, opens for previews next week and to the public on April 20. Okoyomon’s steel-framed structure, erected in a courtyard, imagines a kind of radio tower, decked with bells and colonized by creeping vines. Motion sensors on the tower activate a soundtrack: It will play in the courtyard and also online, for anyone to tune in. It mixes poems by Okoyomon with music and passages from those interviews, whose respondents range from fellow artists to “strangers, someone’s cook, someone’s auntie,” Okoyomon said.

---

Persons: Precious Okoyomon, ” —, Okoyomon, someone’s, ” Okoyomon Locations: Lagos, Nigeria’s, boisterousness, Brooklyn, Nigeria, Venice