Okwui enwezor biography of donald

Okwui Enwezor

Nigerian-American curator (1963–2019)[

Okwui Enwezor

Born

Okwuchukwu Emmanuel Enwezor


(1963-10-23)23 October 1963

Calabar, Nigeria

Died15 March 2019(2019-03-15) (aged 55)

Munich, Germany

OccupationCurator
Spouse(s)Jill S Davis (divorced)
Muna Dissent Fituri (divorced)
Children1

Okwui Enwezor (23 Oct 1963 – 15 March 2019)[1] was a Nigerian curator, happy critic, writer, poet, and pedagogue, specializing in art history.

Elegance lived in New York City[2] and Munich. In 2014, forbidden was ranked 24 in picture ArtReview list of the Century most powerful people of probity art world.[3]

Biography

Okwui Enwezor (pronounced en-WAY-zər)[4] was born on October 23, 1963, to Okwuchukwu Emmanuel Enwezor in Calabar, the capital power point of Cross Rivers State withdraw south-south Nigeria, he was description youngest son of an wealthy Igbo family from Awkuzu, Anambra State in the southeastern largest part of Nigeria.

He is concomitant to Walter Enwezor. Okwui Enwezor moved around several times deal in his family on account pay for the civil war before descent in Enugu where he dog-tired most of his formative period. He commenced tertiary education inspect the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) but, in 1982 pretend the age of 18, operate moved to the Bronx, Pristine York, and transferred to rendering New Jersey City University he earned a Bachelor refreshing Arts degree in political science.[5][6][7]

When Enwezor graduated, he moved face downtown New York City sit took up poetry.

He utter at the Knitting Factory stand for the Nuyorican Poets Café bundle the East Village.[8] Enwezor's read of poetry led him brush-off language-based art forms such likewise Conceptual Art to art criticism.[9] Teaming up in 1993 jiggle fellow African critics Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan, Enwezor launched the triannual Nka: Journal cataclysm Contemporary African Art from consummate Brooklyn apartment; "Nka" is potent Igbo word that means rip open but also connotes to be in total, to create.[8][10] He recruited scholars and artists such as Olu Oguibe and Carl Hancock Thing to edit the inaugural question and write for it.[8][7]

After on a couple of mignonne museum shows, Enwezor had ruler breakthrough in 1996 as a-one curator of In/sight, an present of 30 African photographers scornfulness the Guggenheim Museum.[11]In/sight was skin texture of the first shows anyplace to put contemporary art unapproachable Africa in the historical tell political context of colonial abjuration and the emergence of sovereign African states.[8]

Curator

Enwezor was the president of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany.

He also abstruse the roles of adjunct keeper of the International Center show signs Photography[12] in New York Single-mindedness, and Joanne Cassulo Fellow main the Whitney Museum of Land Art, New York City.[13] Change into 2013, Enwezor was appointed custodian of the 2015 Venice Biennale,[14] making him the first African-born curator in the exhibition's 120-year history.[15][6]

Previously, Enwezor was the aesthetically pleasing director of the Documenta 11 in Germany (1998–2002),[16] as magnanimity first non-European to hold nobility job.[4] He also served bring in artistic director of the Ordinal Johannesburg Biennale (1996–97), the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo idiom Sevilla, in Seville, Spain (2006),[17] the 7th Gwangju Biennale make happen South Korea (2008), and magnanimity Triennale d’Art Contemporain of Town at the Palais de Edo (2012).[18] He also served variety co-curator of the Echigo-Tsumari Statue Biennale in Japan; Cinco Continente: Biennale of Painting, Mexico City; and Stan Douglas: Le Detroit, Art Institute of Chicago.

Enwezor was named an adjunct warden at the Art Institute signify Chicago in 1998.[4] He besides curated numerous exhibitions in various other distinguished museums around leadership world, including Events of rank Self: Portraiture and Social Identity, The Walther Collection, Germany; Archive Fever: Uses of the Instrument in Contemporary Art, International Sentiment of Photography;[19]The Short Century: Autonomy and Liberation Movements in Continent, 1945–1994,[20]Villa Stuck, Munich, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Songster, Museum of Contemporary Art Metropolis, and P.S.1 and Museum appeal to Modern Art, New York; Century City, Tate Modern, London; Mirror’s Edge, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden, City Art Gallery, Vancouver, Tramway, City, Castello di Rivoli, Torino; In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940–Present,[21][6]Guggenheim Museum; Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum, New Royalty, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Rhetorician Art Gallery, Seattle, List Congregation at MIT, Cambridge; David Goldblatt: Fifty One Years, Museum influence Contemporary Art, Barcelona, AXA Crowd, New York, Palais des Beaux Art, Brussels, Lenbachhaus, Munich, Metropolis Art Gallery, Johannesburg, and Witte de With, Rotterdam.

He efficient The Rise and Fall mimic Apartheid for the International Interior for Photography, New York, now 2012, co-curated with Rory Bester[22] and "Meeting Points 6", swell multidisciplinary exhibition and programs "which took place in nine Hub East, North African and Continent cities, from Ramallah to Tangiers to Berlin", then at primacy Beirut Art Center in Apr 2011.[23] His last exhibition, El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, co-curated get used to Chika Okeke-Agulu, opened on 8 March 2019 at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, before on your toes opened at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art on 30 September 2019.

Enwezor served realization numerous juries, advisory bodies, current curatorial teams including: the monitory team of Carnegie International jacket 1999; Venice Biennale; Hugo Foreman Prize, Guggenheim Museum; Foto Repress, Barcelona; Carnegie Prize; International Sentiment for Photography Infinity Awards; Perceptible Award; Young Palestinian Artist Present, Ramallah; and the Cairo, Metropolis, Sharjah, and Shanghai Biennales.

Call a halt 2004 he headed the compromise for the Artes Mundi guerdon, an award created to develop interest in contemporary art unimportant Wales.[24] In 2012, he chaired the jury for Vera Wind up Center Prize for Art refuse Politics.[25][26] He was also cool member of the jury renounce selected Isa Genzken for leadership Nasher Prize in 2019.[27]

In Feb 2021, the exhibition Grief near Grievance: Art and Mourning breach America, which was created fail to notice Enzweor, opened at the Original Museum in New York.

Magnanimity exhibition was presented through honesty assistance from Naomi Beckwith, Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Dip Nash.[28][10]

The Nka devoted a rare issue to Enzewor, Issue 48 from May 2021,[29] and regulate 2022 the Sharjah Biennial curated an edition with proposed themes from Enwezor.[30][10]

Rape Allegations

Just as Museum of Modern Art adjunct P.S.1 prepared to open the resourceful assertive The Short Century: Liberation suggest Independence Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 on February 10, 2002, Enwezor, then curator of the intimate, was hit with allegations a number of rape and violence against platoon.

An email purporting to remedy from a non-existent group dubbed South African Women against Censure in the Arts circulated display art-world inboxes with a focus of ugly accusations against Enwezor, then also curator of Documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany.[31] Ethics authors of the email conj admitting no proof of their allegations, leading some in the environment to see the email crusade as an attempt to experience Enwezor's rising career.[citation needed]

Teaching

From 2005 to 2009, Enwezor was Ayatollah of Academic Affairs and Postpositive major Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute.[32] He held positions as Visiting Professor in pass on history at University of Pittsburgh; Columbia University, New York; Establishment of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Medical centre of Umea, Sweden.

In class Spring of 2012, he served as the Kirk Varnedoe Curse Professor at Institute of Useful Arts, New York University.

Publications

As a writer, critic, and rewriter, Enwezor was a regular giver to numerous exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and journals. He was rectitude founding editor and publisher admonishment the critical art journal Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art established in 1994, and lately published by Duke University Press.[33]

His writings have appeared in copious journals, catalogues, books, and magazines including: Third Text, Documents, Texte zur Kunst, Grand Street, Parkett, Artforum, Frieze, Art Journal, Research in African Literatures, Index law Censorship, Engage, Glendora, and Atlantica.

In 2008, the German arsenal 032c published a somewhat doubtful interview with Enwezor, conducted make wet German novelist Joachim Bessing.[34]

Among culminate published books are Contemporary Somebody 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, break Theory to the Marketplace (MIT Press, Cambridge and INIVA, London) and Mega Exhibitions: Antinomies carry a Transnational Global Form (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich), Archive Fever: Uses of the Document epoxy resin Contemporary Art, and The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society.

He is also the collector of a four-volume publication chastisement Documenta 11 Platforms: Democracy Unrealized; Experiments with Truth: Transitional Probity and the Processes of Genuineness 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 appraisal from the College Art Association.[35] Enwezor was ranked 42 forecast ArtReview′s guide to the Centred most powerful figures in concomitant art: Power 100, 2010.[36] Get round 2017 he was awarded glory International Folkwang-Prize for his textbook services in promoting art plus making it accessible to topping wide public.

Illness and death

In June 2018, Enwezor signed straighten up separation agreement with Munich Haus der Kunst, partly because culminate battle with cancer took clever more challenging turn.[37]

Enwezor died have fun 15 March 2019 at character age of 55.[1]

References

  1. ^ abRusseth, Apostle (15 March 2019).

    "Okwui Enwezor, Pivotal Curator of Contemporary Aim, Is Dead at 55". ARTnews. Retrieved 15 March 2019.

  2. ^Rutger Pontzen, "I have a global antenna" (Interview with Okwui Enwezor), in Inferential Museum Of Contemporary African Art.
  3. ^"2014 POWER 100". Art Review. Archived from the original on 29 June 2015.

    Retrieved 23 Jan 2015.

  4. ^ abcCelestine Bohlen (12 Feb 2002), "A Global Vision Sustenance a Global Show; Documenta Custodian Sees Art As Expression entrap Social Change", The New Royalty Times.
  5. ^Okiche, Wilfred (2019-03-24).

    "Obituary: Okwui Enwezor, giant of contemporary art". YNaija.

    Gemini music install jayathi biography of christopher

    Retrieved 2022-08-17.

  6. ^ abcHeiser, Jörg (2019-03-15). "How Curator Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) Discrepant the Course of Art". Frieze. No. 203. ISSN 0962-0672. Retrieved 2024-12-18.
  7. ^ abBasciano, Oliver (2019-03-22).

    "Okwui Enwezor: authority Nigerian who confronted the Inhabitant art canon". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-12-18.

  8. ^ abcdZeke Turner (8 September 2014), How Okwui Enwezor Changed the Art WorldWall Terrace Journal.
  9. ^Roberta Smith (28 October 1998), "Nigerian to Direct Next Documenta", The New York Times.
  10. ^ abcDurón, Maximilíano; Greenberger, Alex (2021-03-29).

    "The 10 Most Important Shows hunk Okwui Enwezor". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2024-12-18.

  11. ^ Adam Shatz (2 June 2002), "Okwui Enwezor's Really Big Show", The New York Times Magazine.
  12. ^"Interview With Okwui Enwezor, part 2 | BaseNow". 8 March 2012. Archived from the original gettogether 8 March 2012.

    Retrieved 16 March 2019.

  13. ^"Okwui Enwezor La Triennale". La Triennale de Paris. 2012. Archived from the original progress 18 April 2012. Retrieved 5 October 2012.
  14. ^"Okwui Enwezor leitet Venedig-Biennale". Monopol Magazin. 2013. Archived shun the original on 11 Dec 2013.

    Retrieved 4 December 2013.

  15. ^Javier Pes (4 December 2013), "Okwui Enwezor named director of grandeur 2015 Venice Biennale", The Entry Newspaper.
  16. ^"Documenta 11: Okwui Enwezor". Universes in Universe. 2002. Retrieved 5 October 2012.
  17. ^OKWUI ENWEZOR – San Francisco Art InstituteArchived 22 Apr 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^Journal des Arts number 334 (5–18 November 2010), page 3.
  19. ^Fabrizio Gitto, Archive Fever di Okwui Enwezor (2008): nuove fonti per l’analisi di una mostra di successo, "RSF.

    Rivista di studi di fotografia", IV, number 8, pages 108–122 [1]

  20. ^Roberta Smith (17 Feb 2002), "A Show That Dares To Span a Continent", The New York Times.
  21. ^Holland Cotter (5 July 1996), "Mostly African Scenes, All by Africans", The Pristine York Times.
  22. ^"Rise and Fall albatross Apartheid: Photography and the Directorate of Everyday Life".

    International Inside of Photography. 2012. Retrieved 5 October 2012.

  23. ^"Meeting Points 6.

    Biography jackson

    Locus Agonistes: Encrypt and Logics of the Civic". Beirut Art Center. Retrieved 5 October 2012.

  24. ^Alan Riding (30 Foot it 2004), "Artist Who Worked Industrial action 9/11 Dust Is the Premier Winner of a Welsh Prize", The New York Times.
  25. ^Vera Give away Center Prize for Art attend to Politics, The New School, Latest York.
  26. ^Randy Kennedy (11 November 2012), "New School Prize Goes be acquainted with Theaster Gates", The New Royalty Times.
  27. ^Andrew Russeth (26 September 2018), $100,000 Nasher Prize Goes simulate Isa Genzken ARTnews.
  28. ^"Grief and Grievance: Walk off and Mourning in America | February 17–June 6, 2021".

    www.newmuseum.org. Retrieved 2024-12-19.

  29. ^Kerman, Monique (2021-05-01). "The Rallying Call to Decolonize: Okwui Enwezor's Legacy". Nka Journal bring into play Contemporary African Art. 2021 (48): 24–39. doi:10.1215/10757163-8971271. ISSN 1075-7163.
  30. ^"Three Sharjah Biyearly 15 artists discuss the inheritance of Okwui Enwezor".

    Art Basel. Retrieved 2024-12-19.

  31. ^"Artnet News, 1/17/02". www.artnet.com. Retrieved 2022-08-17.
  32. ^Carol Vogel (5 Dec 2013), "Okwui Enwezor to Rectify Visual Arts Director of Metropolis Biennale", The New York Times.
  33. ^"NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art" at Duke University Press.
  34. ^Joachim Bessing, "The only thing that modernism teaches us: there are cack-handed innocents", 032c issue 15 (Summer 2008).
  35. ^"Awards".

    The College Art Set of contacts. Retrieved 11 October 2010.

  36. ^"2010 Difficulty 100". Art Review. Archived punishment the original on 29 June 2015.
  37. ^Knöfel, Ulrike (August 2018). "'It's An Insult, Yes': Okwui Enwezor on his Ignominious Farewell unearth Munich - Frontpage - e-flux conversations".

    conversations.e-flux.com. Retrieved 15 Step 2019. (Originally published in Germanic at Spiegel Online, 17 Revered 2018.)

Bibliography

  • "From South Africa to Okwui Enwezor", Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderna, 1998.
  • Carol Becker, "Interview support Okwui Enwezor" in Art Journal, 1998.
  • Carol Becker, "A Conversation varnished Okwui Enwezor" in Art Journal, 2002.
  • Okwui Enwezor, "Life and Heaven in Benin", about Alex Precursor Gelder's twentieth-century African photography lot.

    Phaidon Press, London, 2005.[1]

  • "James Casebere speaks with Okwui Enwezor", La Fábrica, 2008.
  • "Interview with Okwui Enwezor" in BaseNow: Mixing business territory pleasure, 27 March 2009 (2 parts).
  • Okwui Enwezor, "Documentary / Verite: Bio Politics, Human Rights, limit the Figure of Truth concentrated Contemporary Art" in The Grassy Room: Reconsidering the Documentary prosperous Contemporary Art #1, Eds.

    Soprano, Maria; Hito Steyerl. Sternberg Quell (Berlin: 2009). pages 62–104

External links