Okwui Enwezor

On 15 March 2019, Okwui Enwezor, Nigerian-born curator, art critic, art historian, poet, and educator, passed away in Munich, at the age of 55. In 2014, he was ranked 24 in the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world.

Okwui Enwezor was born in Calabar, Nigeria, on 23 October 1963. In 1982, after a semester at the University of Nigeria, Enwezor moved to the Bronx, New York, when he was 18 years old. In 1987, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political sciences at the New Jersey City University.

After graduating from university, he took up poetry and performed at the Knitting Factory and the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village, New York. Enwezor's study of poetry led him through language-based art forms such as Conceptual Art to art criticism. Teaming up in 1993 with fellow African critics Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan, Enwezor launched the triannual Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art from his Brooklyn apartment. After putting on a couple of small museum shows, Enwezor had his breakthrough in 1996 as a curator of In/sight, an exhibit of 30 African photographers at the Guggenheim Museum. In/sight was one of the first shows anywhere to put contemporary art from Africa in the historical and political context of colonial withdrawal and the emergence of independent African states.

Enwezor was the artistic director of Documenta 11 (1998–2002), an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany and which is often described as the Olympics of contemporary art. He was the first non-European to hold that position. He also curated numerous exhibitions in many other distinguished museums around the world. In 2013, Enwezor was appointed curator of the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Enwezor served on numerous juries, advisory bodies, and curatorial teams, and he was engaged in teaching, among others, at the San Francisco Art Institute.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Selected publications

Okwui Enwezor: the art of curating
Nka : journal of contemporary African art, issue 48, 2021

Rise and fall of apartheid : photography and the bureaucracy of everyday life / Okwui Enwezor; Rory Bester; Michael Godby. - Munich [etc.] : Prestel [etc.], cop. 2013

Zwelethu Mthethwa / Zwelethu Mthethwa; Isolde Brielmaier; Okuwi Enwezor. - New York : Aperture, cop. 2010

Contemporary African art since 1980 / Okwui Enwezor; Chika Okeke-Agulu. - [Bologna] : Damiani, cop. 2009

Archive fever : uses of the document in contemporary photography / Okwui Enwezor. - Göttingen : Steidl ; New York, NY : International Center of Photography, 2008

Home lands - land marks : contemporary art from South Africa / Tamar Garb; Okwui Enwezor; Ivan Vladislavić. - London : Haunch of Venison, 2008

Antinomies of art and culture : modernity, postmodernity, contemporaneity / Terry Smith; Okwui Enwezor. - Durham [etc.] : Duke University Press, 2008

Snap judgments : new positions in contemporary African photography / Okwui Enwezor. - New York : International Center of Photography ; Göttingen : Steidl, 2006

A Conversation with Okwui Enwezor / Carol Becker; Okwui Enwezor. 
Art journal, vol.61 (2), p.8-27, 2002

Under siege : four African cities, Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos / Okwui Enwezor. - Ostfildern-Ruit : Hatje Cantz, 2002, Documenta 11 Platform 4

In/sight: African photographers, 1940 to the present / Clare Bell; Okwui Enwezor; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York). - New York, N.Y : Guggenheim Museum, cop. 1996

Zwelethu Mthethwa in Conversation with Okwui Enwezor, 2 March 2010

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