Okwui Enwezor is a curator, critic, poet, and the director of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany. In 2015 Enwezor was the artistic director of 56th Venice Biennale. In addition to writing extensively on contemporary African art and artists, as well as on American and international art, he regularly writes books, edits publications, and contributes his writing to periodicals such as Artforum, Frieze, Parkett, Texte zur Kunst, and Third Text. He has curated and co-curated numerous ground-breaking exhibitions around the world including: La Triennale, Paris, 2012; 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2008; Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, 2008; Documenta 11, Kassel 2002; and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Gropius Bau, Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and P.S.1 and Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001. He received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York in 2009. Enwezor lives and works in Munich and New York. [Last updated 2016]
It is with immense sadness that we have learned of curator, critic, art historian, poet, and friend Okwui Enwezor’s untimely death on Friday 15 March 2019. He was, and will continue to be, an unwavering, committed, and generous force who has changed the terms of and possibilities in contemporary culture. His work and his collaborations with BAK and FORMER WEST have been of extraordinary importance to us, and full of warmth and joy. His critical style and ideas will continue to teach and move us to question and change the unjust structures through which we work and live. Dear Okwui, our gratitude is boundless. [16 March 2019]
