Okwui Enwezor is Adjunct Curator at International Center of Photography, New York and previously Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Enwezor is founder and editor of the critical art journal Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art published by the Africana Study Center, Cornell University; and has held academic appointments as Visiting Professor in Art History at University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, New York, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and University of Umea, Sweden.

Enwezor was Artistic Director of 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain (2005-2007, Artistic Director of Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (1998-2002) and 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1996-1998). He has curated numerous exhibitions in some of the most distinguished museums around the world, including The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994, Museum Villa Stuck; Century City, Tate Modern, London; Mirror’s Edge, Bildmuseet, Umea; In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940-Present, Guggenheim Museum; Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum, New York and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; David Goldblatt: Fifty One Years, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, co-curator of Echigo-Tsumari Sculpture Biennale in Japan; co-curator of Cinco Continente: Biennale of Painting Mexico City; Stan Douglas: Le Detroit, Art Institute of Chicago; Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, International Center of Photography, New York; The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society, Centro Andalucia de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville, and the forthcoming Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, at International Center of Photography, New York. He is also completing work on The Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Bureaucracy, Institutions and Everyday Life (Fall, 2009) and The Invention of Africa: Photography, 1839-1939, as part his trilogy of exhibitions on the continent for ICP.

As a writer, critic, and editor Enwezor has been a regular contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and journals. His writings have appeared in numerous journals, catalogues, books and magazines including: Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Third Text, Documents, Texte zur Kunst, Grand Street, Parkett, Artforum, Frieze, Art Journal, Research In African Literatures, Index on Censorship, Engage, and Atlantica, amongst many others.

Amongst his books are Reading the Contemporary: African Art, from Theory to the Marketplace (MIT Press, Cambridge and INIVA, London) and Mega Exhibitions: Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich) and editor of the four volume publication of Documenta 11 Platforms: Democracy Unrealized; Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation; Creolité and Creolization; Under Seige: Four African Cities, Freetown, Johanneburg, Kinshasa, Lagos (Hatje Cantz, Verlag, Stuttgart). He is co-editor of Antinomies of Art and Culture after 20th Century: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (Duke University Press, forthcoming Fall, 2007) and currently completing Archaeology of the Present: The Postcolonial Archive, Photography and African Modernity delivered as the 2007 Franklin Murphy Lectures at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.


He has served on numerous juries, advisory bodies, and curatorial teams including: member of the advisory team of Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Venice Biennale, Italy; Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum, New York; Foto Press, Barcelona; Carnegie Prize, International Center for Photography Infinity Awards; New York; Young Palestinian Artist Award, Ramallah; Cairo Biennale, Egypt; Istanbul Biennale, Turkey; Sharjah Biennale, United Arab Emirates; Shanghai Biennale, China; Arts Council England, London; Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Writers Grant, New York; The Aga Khan Prize in Architecture in Muslim Societies, Geneva. He was appointed member of the scientific committee by the Office of the President of Senegal for the 40th anniversary of the 1st International Negro Arts Festival.

Enwezor is a recipient of awards and grants from Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, International Art Critics Association, Peter Norton Curatorial Award. He received Best International Photography Book of the Year Award for his exhibition catalogue Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography from Photo Espana and the Deutscher Foto Buch Prize. In 2006, he was awarded the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Criticism by the College Art Association.