Dokumenta Enwezor
From Myth to Apotheosis in the Life of Art Scholar and Curator Okwui Enwezor
Okwui Enwezor
From " Rethinking Art with Curator Okwui Enwezor"
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Abstract
This essay explores the extraordinary life and career of Okwui Enwezor, a
pioneering art scholar and curator whose trajectory transcended geographic,
cultural, and institutional boundaries to shape the global contemporary art
discourse.
Enwezor
was a Nigerian-born art scholar and curator who rose from modest beginnings to
become a towering figure in the global art world, reshaping its landscape
through his intellectual brilliance, curatorial genius, and strategic
vision.
Going
from his early days in Nigeria to his rise as a commanding figure on the global
art stage, he redefined the visibility and critical framing of African and
post-colonial art within elite Western art institutions, enabled by his
scholarly initiatives and his leadership of prestigious institutions and
exhibitions like Documenta.
Despite
lacking formal art training, Enwezor founded Nka: Journal of Contemporary
African Art, elevated modern African art’s global visibility, and collaborated
with leading scholars and artists.
Through
an examination of his intellectual rigor, social intelligence, and
organizational acumen, this study highlights Enwezor’s unique capacity to
navigate divergent cultural worlds, making him an emblem of both myth and
apotheosis in contemporary art scholarship.
Encounter with an Inspiring but Perplexing Name
When I first encountered Enwezor's name more than twenty years ago in an announcement in Nigerian newspapers requesting photographers in Nigeria to submit entries for Dokumenta, a global exhibition he was curating, he seemed to me like a mythic figure.
How did a Black person, a man with such an unrepentantly Igbo name as Okwui Enwezor come to occupy such a commanding space at the ramparts of the global art universe commanded by the masterdoms of Western elite?
Even though I knew little about the global art world, my exposure to art being largely through books, I knew that the distribution of publicity about art and the provision of opportunities for exposure for artists at a global scale had become highly politicised, in the sense of a struggle amidst competing alternatives.
I knew that the ethnic and cultural centres represented by Caucasian centring within such environments as New York and other Western capitals represented the constellations of connectivity and economic access shaping such capital intensive and culturally resonant events as Dokumenta.
What was Okwui's professional history and cultural pedigree that he had become a powerbroker at such levels?
I was later to learn that I was not alone in my wonderment about this maverick.
Various Western news media celebrated him, marvelling at his curatorial genius and scholarly dynamism, saluting him as one of the topmost figures in the global projection of art.
Yet he seemed little known in his native Nigeria, operating as he was in contexts to which the Nigetian social and information space did not seem significantly integrated into before tle explosion of Internet access in the country.
Social Achievement and Psychological Unifications
By the time Enwezor died untimely of cancer in 2019, he had been a professor of art though having only a BA in Political Science, had published with some of the world's most prestigious art publishers and had led artistic projects and instiutions of great force.
To achieve all these things, he would have needed to combine intellectual acumen, a prodigious capacity for intellectual and organizational work, keen social intelligence and an acute senstivity to opportunities.
He would have needed to be deeply intellectual without the introversion that could at times make social integration with diverse people challenging for an intellectual.
He would have needed to value the solitude vital for profound creativity while being adequately gregarious, since the roles he played implied the integration of intellectual and social contexts.
He would have needed to combine a senstivity to the bohemian identities that may often define artists while building himself in the persona of a businessman at home across cultures and the rarefied universe of the Western art world, where wealth, class and mastery of Western cultural registers are of strategic value.
He achieved all this while being celebrated as critical to the global visibility of post-clasical, better known as modern African art.
Pivotal to this achievement seems to have been his founding of Nka, which became a beacon on modern African art, with the art scholars Saleh Hassan and Chika Okeke Agulu as founding collaborating editors.
How did Okwui, who had no formal training in art practice or study get academically trained professionals in the study of art in founding and running a journal in which he was the leading figure?
That achievement speaks volumes about interpersonal wisdom and is likely illuminating about sources of his success.
Enwezor and Agulu went on to do other great projects together, the last being the epic El Anatsui exhibition Triumphant Scale and the accompanying book El Anatsui and the Reinvention of Sculpture, indicating their relationship grew in strength till Okwui transitioned.
Piecing the Puzzle Together
What will it take to understand such a figure, tracing his rise from when he arrived in the US from Nigeria at 19 to the unified variety of his achievements spanning the equivalent of multiple lifetimes for many other people?
Reading him. Studying about him. Discussing him with those who knew him and who know about him and about the issues and contexts that define him.
I am determined to explore his life and would appreciate any contrbutions to this effort.
Please get in touch if you have any insights you would like to share.All contributions will be publicly acknowledged.
Studying Enwezor's life has much to provide about the logic and dynamism of success.
