Farewell to Okwui Enwezor, one of the world's leading art critics. He had curated the 2015 Biennale

Okwui Enwezor, one of the world’s leading art critics, passed away today at the age of 55. Enwezor had been ill for some time.

Born in Calabar, Nigeria, in 1963, he was also a poet and historian whose other merits included bringing African art, especially contemporary art, to international attention. Raised in Enugu, eastern Nigeria, Enwezor moved to the United States in the 1980s: in the U.S. he studied at New Jersey City University, where he majored in political science. Always a lover of African art, he began his career writing about the art forms of his continent for a number of U.S. magazines, and in 1994 he founded his own, titled Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, which was published by Cornell University’s Center for African Studies and soon became world famous.

Enwezor also soon began curating exhibitions: most notably the exhibition of African photography at the Guggenheim Museum in1996 (In/Sight: African Photographers: 1940 to the Present in 1996), the Johannesburg Biennial in 1997, the survey of African liberation movements between 1945 and 1994 at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York(The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994), and several others. Meanwhile, he had also begun his curatorial work at major museum institutions: from 1998 to 2000, for example, he was curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. Set to the attention of the international scene, he obtained in 2000 the artistic direction of Documenta 11, in 2006 that of the Seville Biennial of Contemporary Art, in 2008 he was appointed curator of the Gwangju Biennial, and from 2011 to 2018 he held the post of director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, where he is remembered for the exhibition on art after World War II between the Atlantic and the Pacific, entitled Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-65 (he resigned last year precisely because of his health problems).

In Italy, Enwezor is best known for being the curator of the 2015 Venice Biennale: it was the first time the historic Venetian event was curated by an African critic. He also curated the Mirror’s edge exhibition held at Castello di Rivoli in 2001. Enwezor has written numerous essays and catalogs, focusing particularly on African art today. His honors include the Peter Norton Curatorial Award and awards from institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the International Art Critics Association.

“Okwui Enwezor,” recalls today the president of the Venice Biennale, Paolo Baratta, “was curator of the 2015 Art Biennale, an important moment in a career that had seen him recognized among the most qualified of the present time. His great openness to the world’s artists, his great sense of responsibility as a curator and his courage in proposing and defending the reasons for Art, were always inspiring elements of his work, which was carried out on every occasion with great intellectual honesty and a refined capacity for analysis and choice.”

Farewell to Okwui Enwezor, one of the world's leading art critics. He had curated the 2015 Biennale

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