Beer as art at documenta show in Kassel
This is not a beer on sale at an art show, it literally is a piece of art. Made specifically for documenta 14, one of the most important shows for contemporary art, Sufferhead stout was conceived by the Nigeria-born artist Emeka Ogboh.
In his art, Mr Ogboh, 40, explores how private, public, and collective memories and historiographies are translated or transformed into sound and sonority.
For his latest art project, Sufferhead, he did research on migration, working on the question what we leave behind or take with us. In interviews with Africans in Germany, Mr Ogboh collated their gustatory experiences as taste shapes a culture too. Migrants’ nutrition reflects to what extent they have assimilated into a new culture, to what extent they have maintained their roots, in short, it shows what migrants gain, lose or have to do without. These issues are at the core of Mr Ogboh’s art. But this time, rather than translating the collected gustatory experiences into sound, he created a beer recipe from which the black Sufferhead is brewed.
It is a craft beer because Mr Ogboh, who now lives in Germany, has been fascinated by the idea of creating an individual beer. However, Mr Ogboh decided to add chili to his 8.2 percent ABV stout after having spoken to Ethiopians, Somalians and Eritreans in Kassel, who shared their experiences with him. That Sufferhead chili stout breaches the German Beer Purity Law is probably intentional: both politically and artistically.
Documenta in Kassel runs from 10 June until 17 September 2017. Whether the 50,000 bottles of Sufferhead will last that long, remains to be seen. After all, how many art works can you drink?
