Weeks after Nigeria lost two major players in the art and culture sector, curator, writer and critic, Okwui Enwezor, has also passed on.
Curator and art promoter, Bisi Silva, died about three weeks ago, after battling cancer for some time.
Last week also, acclaimed scholar and writer, Pius Adesanmi, died in the Ethiopian an Airline plane crash that claimed 157 lives.
According to reports, Okwui, aged 55, also died from cancer at the age of 55.
Enwezor’s profile indicates that he organised powerful shows such as the 2015 Venice Biennale and documenta 11 in 2002. He is the only African-born curator to organise the two prestigious exhibitions.
He was also the artistic director at The Haus Der Kunst from 2011 to 2018.
Enwezor was born as the youngest son of an affluent family of Igbos in Awkuzu in Nigeria in 1963. In 1982, after a semester at the University of Nigeria, Enwezor moved to the Bronx at the age of 18.[6][7] In 1987 he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political sciences at the New Jersey City University.
When Enwezor graduated, he moved downtown and took up poetry. He performed at the Knitting Factory and the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village.[6] Enwezor’s study of poetry led him through language-based art forms like Conceptual Art to art criticism. Teaming up in 1993 with fellow African critics Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan, he 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 to edit the inaugural issue and write for it.[6]
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.
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 Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Among other people who have paid tributes to him, Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum, said Enwezor “will go down in history as one of the greatest curators of all time.”
Okey Ndibe, author of “Never Look an American in the Eye” mourned Okwui, writing: “Okwui made his mark on the world and we were especially proud of him. Go well, man. Good night.”
