About the Book
Okwui Enwezor is widely regarded as a leader among the brilliant curators who emerged in the 1990s to set agendas for understanding the global expansiveness of contemporary art. Among his pathfinding exhibitions were the second Johannesburg Biennale (1997), the paradigm-shifting Documenta11 (2002), Archive Fever (2008), and Postwar (2016). In addition to his groundbreaking curatorial work, Enwezor was also a prolific critic, essayist, and theorist. Selected Writings-a landmark two-volume set-brings together Enwezor’s most influential and foundational works. Spanning a quarter-century, these selections reflect the depth and breadth of Enwezor’s writing and its role in his tireless efforts to decolonize the art world. Volume 1, Toward a New African Art Discourse, includes fifteen essays written between 1994 and 2006. Drawn from exhibition catalogs, art journals, interviews with artists, art reviews, curatorial statements, historical studies, and book chapters, these texts show him striving to fulfil the first main ambition that drove his career: to found and sustain what he called a “New African Art Discourse.” Demonstrating that his writing helped fulfill this goal, this collection reaffirms Enwezor’s status as a transformational figure in the global contemporary art world.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations ix
Foreword / Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director, Sharjah Art Foundation xv
Advisory Editors’ Preface / Salah M. Hassan and Chika Okeke-Agulu xix
Acknowledgments xxiii
Introduction to Okwui Enwezor’s Diasporic Imagination / Terry Smith 1
1. Redrawing Boundaries: Toward a New African Art Discourse (1994) 15
2. The Ruined City: Desolation, Rapture, and Georges AdÉagbo (1996) 30
3. The Body in Question. Whose Body? Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art (1995) 38
4. Ellen Gallagher (1996) 45
5. Colonial Imaginary, Tropes of Disruption: History, Culture, and Representation in the Works of African Photographers (1996) / Okwui Enwezor and Octavio Zaya 50
6. Travel Notes: Living, Working, and Traveling in a Restless World (1997) 99
7. A Question of Place: Revisions, Reassessments, Diaspora (1997) 117
8. Where, What, Who, When: A Few Notes of “African” Conceptualism (1999) 130
9. Between Worlds: Postmodernism and African Artists in the Western Metropolis (1995–96) 149
10. The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 (2001) 180
11. The Black Box (2002) 202
12. The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition (2003) 236
13. Mega-exhibitions and the Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form (2003–4) 269
14. Repetition and Differentiation: Lorna Simpson’s Iconography of the Racial Sublime (2006) 299
15. Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography (2006) 339
Bibliography of Published Works by Okwui Enwezor / Compiled by Ilhan Ozan 403
Index 425
About the Author :
Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019) was an internationally recognized and pathbreaking art curator, former director of Haus der Kunst, founder of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and coauthor of numerous books and exhibition catalogs.
Terry Smith is Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh and Professor at Large, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah.
Review :
“This selection of Okwui Enwezor’s writing offers an intimate look into the beliefs which fueled his practice: those of plurality, fluidity, and openness. It is through these writings that we are able to stay the course of Enwezor’s incomparable vision and insist, as he did, on an expansive understanding of the world and all those who inhabit it.” - Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem
“In 1997, Okwui Enwezor reflected on the difference between the Johannesburg Biennale, the first major international exhibition of his career, and Documenta, pointedly remarking we have ‘other priorities.’ This comment came to characterize not only that foray into the world of global curation but became the through line for all of his endeavors. As this volume attests, the stakes of Enwezor’s exhibitions were elucidated in their context and through his writing, which is inextricable from and yet also independent of them. He had a distinct historical, political, worldly, theoretical, and poetic rigor and love for the jostling of ideas, stories, and positions that would set the various fields in which he engaged in new directions through his singular momentum. These assembled texts reflect a lifetime committed to developing one’s voice, changing the worlds of art, and creating a new language with the intellectual heft, complexity, and dynamism to make a case for his presence and those he championed.” - Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, Whitney Museum of American Art
