Okwui Enwezor photographed by Sven Hoppe.
Image courtesy of Picture-Alliance/DPA/AP Images.
The late Okwui Enwezor never imagined that he would have the indelible legacy he has left on the art world. The Nigerian-born curator became an art-world fixture after forming Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art with Salah M. Hassan, Chika Okeke-Agulu, and Olu Oguibe in 1994. He went on to curate some of the most influential exhibitions that presented Black Diaspora art to wider global audiences. In this feature for Artnews by Maximilíano Durón and Alex Greenberger, the authors explore ten of Enwezor’s most impactful shows that demonstrate his work as a curatorial maverick and how he worked to recast the art world in his expansive vision.
“These shows also envisioned the field of art history as something flexible and, by its very nature, incomplete, and Enwezor—a passionate, ambitious curator with a no-nonsense sensibility—worked tirelessly to reshape it over and over again. Ultimately, he succeeded in making the discipline more inclusive.” - Maximilíano Durón and Alex Greenberger
