Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art
Special Issue: Okwui Enwezor and the Art of Curating
EDITORS: Chika Okeke-Agulu, Jane Chin Davidson and Alpesh Kantilal Patel
PUBLICATION DATE: May 2021
PUBLISHER: Duke University Press
DETAILS: Essays by Natasha Becker, “In The Wake of Okwui Enwezor,” Susette Min, “A Host of Possibilities: Okwui Enwezor’s Exhibition Making as a Practice of Hospitality,” Monique Kerman, “The Rallying Call to Decolonize: Okwui Enwezor’s Legacy,” Przemysław Strożek, “Abdelkader Lagtaâ and His Conceptual Exercises in Poland, 1972–74,” Amelia Jones, “Ethnic Envy and Other Aggressions in the Contemporary “Global” Art Complex,“ Mary Ellen Strom & Shane Doyle, “Cherry River: Where the Rivers Mix,” and Sabine Dahl Nielsen & Anne Ring Petersen, “Enwezor’s Model and Copenhagen’s Center for Art on Migration Politics”
Abstract
Curatorial Impacts – the Futures of Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019)
Editors: Chika Okeke-Agulu, Jane Chin Davidson and Alpesh Kantilal Patel
Dedicated to the memory of Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019), the essays for this special issue recognize the profound impact left by the Nigerian art historian, curator, poet, and educator who transformed the curatorial present of global exhibitions and anticipated their decolonizing futures. His groundbreaking work includes his 2002 debut as the first “non-European art director of documenta” whereby “Democracy Unrealized” was the “first truly global, postcolonial documenta exhibition.” The contributors for this special issue will emphasize the way in which Enwezor’s creation of political platforms and artistic manifestoes not only changed the form and function of global exhibitions, but also opened up new ways to implement social and political activism in association with aesthetic practices, performative displays, and curatorial initiatives