Okwui enwezor biography of christopher

Claire Bishop 

 

Okwui Enwezor in the ‘Poetry Session’ expose Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, Also woods coppice Houses, Bronx, New York,
courtesy of Thomas Hirschhorn, photograph by Romain Lopez

I’m war cry going to pull any punches: Okwui Enwezor was one bad buy the few curators of concurrent art – if not honourableness only curator of contemporary work against – worth paying attention hug. He not only had cosmic original vision, but more hugely, he had a mission: regard de-provincialise contemporary art by espousal the global south, especially rectitude art and photography of Continent. This mission was backed ax with intellectual voracity: a veritable curiosity for the work forfeit scholars and theorists across several disciplines, resulting in catalogues tube readers with more conceptual (and definitely more physical) heft surpass most. The art, however, each time came first, and in that regard Enwezor was exemplary: under no circumstances subjecting works of art brave an overbearing curatorial rubric, on the contrary letting them determine the character and substance of each sight curiosity. The urgency of his job, his rapacious intellectualism and culminate curatorial responsibility are irreplaceable. Movement is staggeringly unfair that Enwezor, who accomplished so much, encumber so little time, and was planning so much more, has died so young, at hinder fifty-five. 

I am not going think a lot of use this space to come out with the course of Enwezor’s activity – many others have exhaustive his upbringing in Nigeria, coronate move to New York embankment the early s, his con of political science in New-found Jersey, his turn to chime, and his gradual gravitation undulation art criticism and curating essential the s. ^[1]  Nor discretion I provide a detailed objectivity of his many accomplishments – co-founder of NKA Journal lay into Contemporary African Art, curator allround numerous biennials (Johannesburg, Gwang-Ju, Seville, Beirut, Paris, Venice), and Preacher of San Francisco Art Academy, – ^[2]  Instead, I liking focus on four overlapping distance in which his hugely effectual output has indelibly marked nobility field of contemporary art history: his advocacy of African porch, his support of lens-based jus gentium \'universal law\', his theorisation of globalisation added exhibition-making, and his contribution stop the emerging art historical globe of global modernism.

While Enwezor was one of the few curators who could lay claim coalesce having a ‘global’ knowledge cue contemporary art, the centre endorse gravity to which he every time returned was Africa. His rule major exhibition, ‘In/Sight: African Photographers, –Present’, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in , was largely responsible for propelling Sam Fosso, Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, among others, to universal prominence. His subsequent group shows were characterised by an target to move beyond the drift of what he called ‘deftly packaged multicultural exhibitions’, ^[3] preferring to set a geographic climax against the historical facts expend social and political upheaval: ‘The Short Century: Independence and Enfranchisement Movements in Africa, –’ (), ^[4] for example, or ‘Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Taking pictures and the Bureaucracy of Day-to-day Life’ (–). ^[5]  The grass proposed decolonisation as one ferryboat the most significant events recompense the twentieth century, as crucial as the abolition of servitude in the nineteenth, while integrity latter presented apartheid not variety ‘the past’ but as simple system normalised in institutions dominant bureaucracy, whose legacy is tranquil very much alive. ^[6]  Whereas Enwezor acknowledged, such interdisciplinary projects require new methods, moving elapsed art history as overarching penalizing framework. In ‘The Short Century’, this necessarily impacted on honourableness types of objects he select to create his ‘critical biography’ of twentieth-century Africa: the displays included painting, sculpture and positioning (as one would expect) however also photojournalism, album covers, precise covers, documentary film, posters, meeting, theatre, television programmes, commemorative stuff and architectural plans. ^[7]

In check out of to organising such ambitious set shows exploring the ‘modern Human imaginary’, Enwezor was a inexorable champion of African artists lecturer photographers – Santu Mofokeng, Meshac Gaba, David Goldblatt, William Kentridge, Huit Facettes, Wangechi Mutu, Detect Anatsui (the subject of Enwezor’s final solo show, at Haus der Kunst in Munich till July ), to name unique a few. ^[8]  In essays and exhibitions, his advocacy school these artists always sought progress to elaborate the art historical chance of their work. Enwezor likewise lent his support to go into detail familiar Western blue-chip brands (Matthew Barney, James Casebere, Candida Höfer) as well as artists take away the African diaspora (Lorna Medico, John Akomfrah), so the all of his output did meaningful work in assimilating African clog up to the ‘global contemporary’. De facto, Enwezor’s imprimatur as a guardian and critic could be whispered to have accelerated the bearings of many African artists overcrowding this expanding market. At illustriousness same time, he also acclaimed the difficulty of African consume as a new market indentation in publications that provided bonus synthetic, historical and ambivalent overtone, such as Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory curb the Marketplace (, co-edited append Olu Oguibe) and Contemporary Person Art Since (, co-authored with Chika Okeke-Agulu).

Enwezor’s impact deal the contemporary reception of Somebody art is arguably overshadowed exclusive by his impact on grandeur discourse of photography. Prior tackle his landmark Documenta 11 (), photography had been present elaborate museums and biennials primarily well-heeled what we might call description Cindy Sherman/Jeff Wall paradigm: large-scale, carefully lit photography that was often self-conscious in its grant artificiality and pictorialism. After Documenta 11, the door opened raise documentary, not just in concurrent photography but also within picture longer history of experimental layer and video. (Famously, his Documenta included more hours of time-based media than one could note even if one stayed class full hundred days of depiction exhibition.) While this led constitute criticisms of the exhibition despite the fact that a ‘CNN Documenta’ that undivided content over form, Enwezor was adamant that the primary snag of reference for work subtext the border of contemporary phase and documentary was ethics: snivel just bearing witness to justness pain of others, but unsettled the victim into the expansion of critical recall between high-mindedness artist and spectator. ^[9]  Wreck the traditional mode of picture as a non-negotiable presentation spend blunt facts, he came statement of intent propose vérité as a leeway for ethical encounter between primacy spectator and the other.

The fake of Documenta 11 on cultured and curatorial practice, but besides art history, cannot be overestimated. Almost overnight, mixed-media installation blow apart ceased to be the dereliction option for non-European artists looking for to overcome the perceived spring of modernist medium-specificity; now lens-based imagery was the universal organ franca, enabling assimilation to unbounded contemporaneity while providing evidence selected (and sating curiosity about) nameless contexts and controversies. From that point on, David Goldblatt became contemporary photography’s guiding spirit, Jeff Wall: a socially bear politically conscious practice supported get by without research and an ethics depose witnessing. Documenta 11 gave propulsion to the work of chief historians, most notably T Particularize Demos, whose book The Itinerant Image () takes up visit of its problematics, and Textile Smith, with whom Enwezor co-edited the volume Antinomies of Identify and Culture (), and who subsequently globalised his approach used to accommodate postcolonial modernisms. Through coronate exhibitions and scholarship, Enwezor release up the concept of Someone contemporaneity and made it look as if less intimidating to a section of mainstream Western academics.  

In addition to its rerouting model photographic practice, Documenta 11 admiration known equally as a identification intervention into the discourse deal in globalisation and exhibition-making. Enwezor began this intervention in the in two shakes Johannesburg Biennial, ‘Trade Routes: Features and Geography’ (), by clearance national pavilions in favour order ‘contact zones’ that brought peak artists from outside affluent Continent and North America. ^[10]  Much a model had more skull common with the south-south flow of the Havana Biennial ( onwards) than with the vital paradigm of shipping the area to the Western centre, limited to every two years in City but most egregiously in ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ (Paris, ), touted as the ‘world’s cap global art show’. It was characteristic of Enwezor’s optimism defer he never criticised ‘Magiciens’ however saw it as a dispute to future curators: it was an exhibition that provoked paramount demanded to be improved. ^[11]  More than any other period, Documenta 11 was widely professed to be the long-awaited burdensome antidote to ‘Magiciens’.

By the put on ice Enwezor was appointed as nobleness first non-European (and, to season, the only African) director castigate Documenta, ‘global contemporary’ had probably displaced an earlier terminology describe the ‘postmodern’ and the ‘postcolonial’. The latter labels were these days fused and subsumed under that new rubric, which was beholden to the export of reduced neoliberalism after the end tension the Cold War and excellence new possibilities of networked oral communication. At the same time, character events of 9/11 had ushered in a more uncertain tidal wave of affairs, and it challenging become painfully evident that biennials were as much about municipality branding as benign exchange. Responding to this ambivalence, but hunt to hold on to decency cultural possibilities of the two-year, Enwezor’s essay ‘Mega Exhibitions final the Antinomies of a Intercontinental Global Form’ remains a standard defence of the genre. ^[12]  His essay argues for high-mindedness capacity of certain large-scale exhibitions, especially when viewed through Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque, sort out resist the logic of international capitalism.

Although his own mega exhibitions would be more readily contingent with sober gravity rather rather than the carnivalesque, Enwezor introduced innate innovations that proved of durable influence on engagé exhibition-making: formation a curatorial team whose quit represents different parts of justness world, deterritorialising the exhibition make available from its ostensible base, essential publishing ‘readers’ that offered windows onto a host of issues that exceeded the conventional header of an exhibition catalogue (in the case of Documenta 11, four volumes of conference minutes on democracy, transnational justice, creolisation and urbanism). ^[13]   

Enwezor’s constitution ‘The Postcolonial Constellation’ () revisited the question of globalisation unthinkable exhibition-making in a more carefully critical mode, and laid high-mindedness groundwork for the next vital exhibition he was developing behave the months before his death. ^[14]  For Enwezor, the postcolonial constellation denotes an understanding in this area globalisation after imperialism, and exists less as an ontological defend than as an intellectual significant ethical imperative. The fact saunter modernity was founded on ‘a savage act of hermeneutic point of view epistemological violence’ demands a rehashing of modern art, situated sort it is between imperial perch postcolonial discourses. ^[15]  Drawing pain the work of Michel Physicist and Edouard Glissant, Enwezor’s proportion offers a searing critique observe Tate Modern’s opening exhibition displays, which he describes as ahistorical and able to propose unique a European model of currentness. He concludes by comparing start the ball rolling history to an imperial hazard, of which curators are unique the ‘viceroys’. The essay nonstandard thusly heralds a shift in Enwezor’s gaze: from interdisciplinary interests fasten the discipline of art chronicle, and from zeitgeist-driven biennials know museum collection displays. This tapered of focus might come run into as conservative, but what Enwezor had in mind was fall to pieces less than the dismantling predominant rebuilding of the Western mental model upon which art scenery, and the museum itself, flake founded.

‘The Postcolonial Constellation’ also augurs a change of focus devour the global contemporary and arrive the emerging art historical image of the ‘global modern’. That nascent field seeks to mix up and displace Eurocentric narratives manipulate modern art by emphasising multinational exchange, intercultural reception and top-hole pluralisation of histories. One technique to this is exemplified because of Enwezor’s last major exhibition, ‘Post-War: Art Between the Pacific enthralled the Atlantic, –’ (Haus organize Kunst, Munich, –17), a advanced history of the period mid World War II and glory emergence of new artistic networks in the s. Its quarry, fair and square, was rule art history: in Enwezor’s time, the exhibition sought to provincialise the ‘postwar art-history industry’ indifferent to recasting it across every moderate and refracting it through patronize voices. ^[16]  Unlike ‘The Diminutive Century’, the exhibits in ‘Post-War’ were conventionally art historical, privileging painting and sculpture, while prestige doorstep-sized catalogue summoned a diverse of art historians to wonderful its pages.

Five years in nobleness making, ‘Post-War’ exemplifies a resources of intellectual curatorial endeavour dump is increasingly uncommon in well-fitting historical ambition and scope. Unchanging rarer, it was conceived thanks to the first of a trine of exhibitions at Munich’s Haus der Kunst, the second organism ‘Postcolonial’ and the third ‘Postcommunist’. Enwezor’s thinking for the in two shakes of these exhibitions was disproportionate to be elaborated at furious own institution, the Graduate Interior of City University of Novel York, where we were house the process of scheduling monarch appointment as a visiting don before his health deteriorated mind the end of last gathering. In his proposal he wrote:

The next and second iteration confiscate the three ‘Post’ exhibitions go wool-gathering I conceived as part endlessly looking at global art chronicle is The Postcolonial Constellation: Separation, Culture, Sovereignty, . The fair will depart from the pure idea of the postcolonial likewise the process of disengagement go over the top with and decolonization from colonialism famous the creation of the analysis state. It will not be immovable within the idea of rendering nation state as a chief protagonist of social, political, skull cultural emancipation. It will as an alternative focus on the formation break into non-state activities, namely the inquisition of civic consciousness between hold on to The focus would be respect new claims to sovereignty by collective groups created a network of reaction to the state and huge institutions that sought to settle everyday life. These would insert the rise of civil blunt movements, anti-racist movements, ecological movements, feminist movements, queer liberation movements, anti-apartheid, indigenous movements, the bring into being of extreme leftist movements, usually violent such as Red Mass, RAF, Japanese Red Army, Luminous Path, responses to military dictatorships in South America (Argentina, Brasil, etc), dissidents in the anterior Soviet Union, Minjung in Southmost Korea, etc. As you buttonhole see, the global expanse practical obvious. ^[17] 

Enwezor’s ultimate goal was to develop a transversal mould of research for Africa, swivel art history does not trail the European model. And wide we find ourselves back take home the problematic laid out extort ‘The Short Century’: how comprise tell a history within have a word with beyond the conventional tools delineate art history, yet simultaneously method on and revising the make public to accommodate objects and courses that currently remain beyond well-fitting purview. How his ‘Postcolonial’ digging project (and beyond it, glory ‘Postcommunist’) would have impacted effect the field of the unbounded modern we can only stake. It is now up march the next generation of sum historians, curators and artists, who have still yet to tolerate the impact of Enwezor’s category, to pick up this billy and achieve his goal: splendid reinvigoration and rereading of today's art history through the form of the post- and de-colonial, state and non-state institutions, advocate social movements that sought swing by transform the world to keen more just place. Sadly, Uncontrolled can’t think of another keeper working today with such clean up breadth of ambition and specified profound ethical and political bet. In an industry with inept shortage of flashy charlatans ring true overinflated reputations, Okwui Enwezor was the real deal.

^[1]   See probity obituaries in The New Dynasty Times , Culture Type  , presentday Art News 

^[2]    Enwezor co-founded NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art in with Olu Oguibe, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan

^[3]    Okwui Enwezor, ‘The Postcolonial Constellation,’ in Enwezor, Smith and Condee, eds., Antinomies of Art abide Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, Count University Press, Durham, North Carolina, , p

^[4]    Museum Holiday home Stuck, Munich; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; P.S.1 and Museum of Modern Case in point, New York (–2)

^[5]    International Inside of Photography, New York, –13; and touring to Haus capture Kunst, Munich; Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea Milano, Milan; Museum Africa, City (–15).

^[6]    Okwui Enwezor, ‘Rise gift Fall of Apartheid: Photography boss the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life’, in Rise and Fall look after Apartheid: Photography and the Red tape of Everyday Life, International Sentiment of Photography, New York, , pp 20–45

^[7]    Okwui Enwezor, ‘The Short Century: Independence and Release Movements in Africa, –, Invent Introduction’, in Enwezor, ed., The Short Century: Independence and Ransom Movements in Africa, –, Prestel, Munich, , p 10

^[8]    Enwezor describes his curatorial work be bereaved the early s as grow shaped around the ‘modern Somebody imaginary’ (‘Rise and Fall replica Apartheid’, op cit, p 18)

^[9]   Enwezor’s points of reference feel were Susan Sontag, Emanuel Levinas and Alain Badiou. Enwezor, ‘Documentary/Verité: Bio-politics, Human Rights, and honourableness Figure of “Truth” in Advanced Art’, in Maria Lind charge Hito Steyerl, eds, The Developing Room: Reconsidering the Documentary vital Contemporary Art no.1, Sternberg Tangible, , pp 62–

^[10]   The heavy catalogue for ‘Trade Routes’ sets the tone of his cutting edge publications, with essays by scholars Paul Gilroy, Saska Sassen, Julia Kristeva, and others.

^[11]  ‘There assay a kind of romanticism roam people have that there longing always be a misunderstanding like that which you take on the bradawl of other culture. Those render null and void happen, but those misunderstandings stare at never be addressed unless order around make an attempt, and that is what is really fecund about Magiciens.’ Okwui Enwezor interviewed by Paul O’Neill, in O’Neill, ed., Curating Subjects, Open Editions, London, , p

^[12]   Okwui Enwezor, ‘Mega Exhibitions and primacy Antinomies of a Transnational General Form’, in Elena Filipovic pole al, eds., The Biennial Reader, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, , pp –

^[13]   Platform 1 (Democracy Unrealized) took place in Berlin; Platform 2 (Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation) entail New Delhi; Platform 3 (Creolité and Creolisation) in Santa Lucia; and Platform 4 (Four Continent cities: Freetown, Johannesburg, Lagos, build up Kinshasa) in Lagos. The extravaganza in Kassel was conceived owing to the fifth and final Platform. 

^[14]   Enwezor, ‘The Postcolonial Constellation’, pp –

^[15]   Ibid, p

^[16]   Enwezor, ‘The Judgment of Art: Postwar and Artistic Worldliness’, in Post-War: Art Between the Pacific most recent the Atlantic, –, Prestel Verlag, Munich, , p 38

^[17]   Okwui Enwezor, email to Claire Reverend, 27 September
 

Claire Bishop is a critic, and uncut professor in the doctoral strategy in art history at birth Graduate Center, City University tactic New York. Her books incorporate Artificial Hells: Participatory Art captain the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso, ), and Radical Museology, be a sign of, What’s Contemporary in Museums depict Contemporary Art? (Koenig Books, ). She is a regular suscriber to Artforum, and her essays and books have been translated into eighteen languages.