Okwui Enwezor

Okwui Enwezor (23 October 1963 – 15 March 2019) was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. He lived in New York City and Munich. In 2014, he was ranked 24 in the ''ArtReview'' list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world.

Biography

Okwui Enwezor (pronounced )Celestine Bohlen (12 February 2002)
"A Global Vision For a Global Show; Documenta Curator Sees Art As Expression of Social Change"
''The New York Times''. was born Okwuchukwu Emmanuel Enwezor in Calabar on October 23, 1963 as the youngest son of an affluent Igbo family from Awkuzu, Anambra State, he moved around severally with his family on account of the civil war before settling in Enugu where he spent most of his formative years. He commenced tertiary education at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka but, in 1982 at the age of 18, he moved to the Bronx, New York, and transferred to the New Jersey City University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

When Enwezor graduated, he moved downtown New York City and took up poetry. He performed at the Knitting Factory and the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village.Zeke Turner (8 September 2014)
How Okwui Enwezor Changed the Art World
''Wall Street Journal''. Enwezor's study of poetry led him through language-based art forms such as Conceptual Art to art criticism.Roberta Smith (28 October 1998)
"Nigerian to Direct Next Documenta"
''The New York Times''. 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; "Nka" is an Igbo word that means art but also connotes to make, to create. He recruited scholars and artists such as Olu Oguibe and Carl Hancock Rux to edit the inaugural issue and write for it.

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.

Curator

Enwezor was the director of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany. He also had the roles of adjunct curator of the International Center of Photography in New York City, and Joanne Cassulo Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. In 2013, Enwezor was appointed curator of the 2015 Venice Biennale, making him the first African-born curator in the exhibition's 120-year history.

Previously, Enwezor was the artistic director of the Documenta 11 in Germany (1998–2002), as the first non-European to hold the job. He also served as artistic director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1996–97), the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo de Sevilla, in Seville, Spain (2006), the 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2008), and the Triennale d’Art Contemporain of Paris at the Palais de Tokyo (2012). He also served as co-curator of the Echigo-Tsumari Sculpture Biennale in Japan; ''Cinco Continente: Biennale of Painting'', Mexico City; and ''Stan Douglas: Le Detroit'', Art Institute of Chicago.

Enwezor was named an adjunct curator at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. He also curated numerous exhibitions in many other distinguished museums around the world, including ''Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity'', The Walther Collection, Germany; ''Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art'', International Center of Photography; ''The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994'', Villa Stuck, Munich, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and P.S.1 and Museum of Modern Art, New York; ''Century City'', Tate Modern, London; ''Mirror’s Edge'', Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Tramway, Glasgow, Castello di Rivoli, Torino; ''In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940–Present'', Guggenheim Museum; ''Global Conceptualism'', Queens Museum, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, List Gallery at MIT, Cambridge; ''David Goldblatt: Fifty One Years'', Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, AXA Gallery, New York, Palais des Beaux Art, Brussels, Lenbachhaus, Munich, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, and Witte de With, Rotterdam.

He organized ''The Rise and Fall of Apartheid'' for the International Center for Photography, New York, in 2012 and "Meeting Points 6", a multidisciplinary exhibition and programs "which took place in nine Middle East, North African and European cities, from Ramallah to Tangier to Berlin", then at the Beirut Art Center in April 2011. His last exhibition, "El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale," co-curated with Chika Okeke-Agulu, opened on 8 March 2019 at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, before it opens at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art on 30 September 2019.

Enwezor served on numerous juries, advisory bodies, and curatorial teams including: the advisory team of Carnegie International in 1999; Venice Biennale; Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum; Foto Press, Barcelona; Carnegie Prize; International Center for Photography Infinity Awards; Visible Award; Young Palestinian Artist Award, Ramallah; and the Cairo, Istanbul, Sharjah, and Shanghai Biennales. In 2004 he headed the jury for the Artes Mundi prize, an award created to stimulate interest in contemporary art in Wales. In 2012, he chaired the jury for Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics.

Rape Allegations

Just as Museum of Modern Art adjunct P.S.1 prepared to open the ambitious ''The Short Century: Liberation and Independence Movements in Africa, 1945-1994'' on February 10, 2002, Enwezor, then curator of the show, was hit with allegations of rape and violence against women. An email purporting to be from a group called South African Women against Abuse in the Arts circulated to art-world inboxes with a series of ugly accusations against Enwezor, then also curator of Documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany.

The lengthy email asked, "Did Documenta curator commit Rape?" and then goes on to claim that Enwezor may have raped a young woman artist in his hotel room in Sweden in 1998, that "on many occasions he physically attacked his irstwife," who subsequently divorced him, and that his then present wife "called the police to her home and obtained a police restraining order against him for attacking her verbally and physically while they had Christmas dinner." The email concluded, "If Okwui Enwezor committed this act... who knows which woman will be his next victim?" and urged that the art world discuss the issue "openly so that no other woman artist will experience the same thing at the hands of a powerful male curator."

The email was first circulated on January 12, 2002, and summarised by the Berliner Zeitung on January 16, 2002.

Teaching

From 2005 to 2009, Enwezor was Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute. He held positions as Visiting Professor in art history at University of Pittsburgh; Columbia University, New York; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and University of Umea, Sweden. In the Spring of 2012, he served as the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Publications

As a writer, critic, and editor, Enwezor was a regular contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and journals. He was the founding editor and publisher of the critical art journal '' Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art'' established in 1994, and currently published by Duke University Press.

His writings have appeared in numerous journals, catalogues, books, and magazines including: ''Third Text'', '' Documents'', ''Texte zur Kunst'', '' Grand Street'', ''Parkett'', ''Artforum'', ''Frieze'', '' Art Journal'', ''Research in African Literatures'', '' Index on Censorship'', Engage, '' Glendora'', and ''Atlantica''. In 2008, the German magazine ''032c'' published a somewhat controversial interview with Enwezor, conducted by German novelist Joachim Bessing.

Among his books are ''Contemporary African Art Since 1980'' (Bologna: Damiani, 2009) co-authored with Chika Okeke-Agulu, ''Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity'' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), ''Reading the Contemporary: African Art, from Theory to the Marketplace'' (MIT Press, Cambridge and INIVA, London) and ''Mega Exhibitions: Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form'' (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich), ''Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art'', and ''The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society''. He is also the editor of a four-volume publication of ''Documenta 11 Platforms: Democracy Unrealized; Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation''; ''Creolité and Creolization''; ''Under Siege: Four African Cities, Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos'' (Hatje Cantz, Verlag, Stuttgart).

Recognition

In 2006, Enwezor received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association. Enwezor was ranked 42 in ''ArtReview''′s guide to the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art: Power 100, 2010.

Illness and death

In June 2018 Enwezor signed a separation agreement with Munich Haus der Kunst, partly because his battle with cancer took a more challenging turn.

Enwezor died on 15 March 2019 at the age of 55.

References

Bibliography

* "From South Africa to Okwui Enwezor", Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderna, 1998.
* Carol Becker, "Interview with Okwui Enwezor" in ''Art Journal'', 1998.
* Carol Becker, "A Conversation with Okwui Enwezor" in ''Art Journal'', 2002.
* Okwui Enwezor, "Life and Afterlife in Benin", about Alex Van Gelder's twentieth-century African photography collection. Phaidon Press, London, 2005.
* "James Casebere speaks with Okwui Enwezor", ''La Fábrica'', 2008.

"Interview with Okwui Enwezor"
in ''BaseNow: Mixing business with pleasure'', 27 March 2009 (2 parts).
* Okwui Enwezor, "Documentary / Verite: Bio Politics, Human Rights, and the Figure of Truth in Contemporary Art" in ''The Green Room: Reconsidering the Documentary in Contemporary Art'' #1, Eds. Lind, Maria; Hito Steyerl. Sternberg Press (Berlin: 2009). pp 62–104

External links

Artkrush.com interview with Okwui Enwezor, May 2006Biography for Okwui EnwezorOkwui Enwezor
in conversation with Anthony Downey

{{DEFAULTSORT:Enwezor, Okwui
1963 births
2019 deaths
American art curators
Igbo educators
Igbo poets
Igbo writers
Igbo curators
New Jersey City University alumni
San Francisco Art Institute faculty
University of Pittsburgh faculty
Columbia University faculty
Umeå University faculty
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
Frank Jewett Mather Award winners
People from Calabar
Nigerian emigrants to the United States
American people of Igbo descent
Igbo academics
Igbo-language writers
Venice Biennale artistic directors