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.
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
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.
