Migratory Notes: New York City Edition

“Migration is a collective condition that reshapes cities, marking them with sound, taste, and presence. In my work, gathering becomes a space to confront the frictions of movement and to build new forms of relation from that friction.”  —Emeka Ogboh


The Goethe-Institut New York is pleased to present Migratory Notes – New York City Edition (2026)—a one-night multisensory installation by artist Emeka Ogboh that uses taste, sound, scent, and conviviality to reimagine how migration and diversity are experienced in contemporary urban life. At a time when global debates around movement are increasingly shaped by fear and political polarization, Migratory Notes proposes a counter-gesture: a space where people gather, eat, drink, listen, and engage one another through the most fundamental human acts of hospitality and encounter.

Conceived through the lens of New York City, one of the world’s most emblematic landscapes of migration, the installation draws inspiration from a selection of the city’s major migration currents. New York is a place where 38% of residents are foreign-born, and where neighborhoods across the five boroughs are defined by intersecting languages, foodways, music, and diasporic histories. Rather than reproduce familiar visual clichés of the city, the installation turns to its global sensory architecture: the flavors, rhythms, atmospheres, and everyday intimacies through which diversity is lived. At the heart of this installation is the Migratory Notes: New York Edition Gin, a bespoke spirit crafted in collaboration with Forthave Sprits, with each botanical representing a migration stream that has shaped the city. Signature cocktails crafted from the limited-run gin will be served, accompanied by an artist-curated playlist drawn from the musical traditions of each migration stream. The playlist mirrors the polyphonic reality of New York’s soundscape. From cumbia to soukous, dabketo bhangra, rebetiko to jazz, highlife to reggaetón, the playlist mirrors the polyphonic reality of New York’s soundscape. 

The title Migratory Notes draws on the dual meaning of the word “notes” as both documentation and sensory expression. It reflects the way migration leaves traces across cities: in food and drink, in sound, in language, in memory, and in the everyday textures of urban life. “Notes” here refers to the act of observing and gathering fragments, the field notes of cultural movement, as well as the sensory notes that shape how we experience a place: tasting notes, musical notes, atmospheric notes. In this project, migration is understood not as an abstract demographic fact, but as a series of lived impressions and resonances. Each city becomes a notebook of movement, composed of flavors, voices, rhythms, and encounters. Migratory Notes captures this layered sensorial record, offering an intimate way to understand how global flows shape local experience. Through the interplay of taste, sound, spatial design, and communal interaction, Migratory Notes: New York City reframes migration as a generative force.

This project is the latest in Ogboh’s decade-long engagement with food, drink, and the act of hosting as a means to engage civic populations with international politics. In 2015 at Galerie Wedding, Ogboh produced his first beer—The Original Sufferhead—a stout inspired by a tasting survey of the concept of “home” by African migrants in Berlin—and a transgressive break from the “Reinheitsgebot,” or the so-called German “beer purity” law, through the addition of ingredients beyond the regulated barley, hops, yeast, and water. The following year, Ogboh expanded the project to include a speculative infomercial and branding campaign at Ludlow 38, the Goethe-Institut New York’s former exhibition project-space. Additional beer projects have been developed in collaboration with various local breweries for documenta 14 (2017), Münster Skulptur Projekte (2017), Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts ( 2022), Tate Modern (2024), and more. Ogboh first turned to gin, rather than beer, for The Boats (2024), at Mona Forma, the summer festival of Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art, which pointedly addressed Australian hostility towards migration.



This event is limited to guests aged 21 and older. Proof of age with valid government ID is required for entry. This event is free. Registration is required but does not guarantee admission.

This event is made possible with the generous support of The Friends of Goethe New York.



Conceived by Emeka Ogboh
Produced by Zachary B. Feldman
Gin produced by Forthave Spirits
Cocktail recipes by Natasha J. David
Sound by Bang & Olufsen
Graphic Design by Moritz Kreul