Often credited for turning global attention to the rich and expansive art of the Global South, he battled fiercely against the deeply embedded and reductive nature of the Euro- and Western-centric art world. This week, our Maverick Life Art School series takes a closer look at the undeniably iconic Okwui Enwezor
Curator: Okwuchukwu Emmanuel Enwezor (1963-2019)
Born: Calabar, Nigeria
Okwui Enwezor
“How Okwui Enwezor Changed the Artworld”, reads the title of a 2014 Wall Street Journal Article. A headline of the same name was published later in the Frieze Magazine. In The Guardian, he was called “Giant of the Art World” while The New York Times coined Enwezor “the Curator Who Remapped the Artworld”, and the “Curator Who Shaped a Global View of Contemporary Art”. The list goes on.
Suffice it to say, Okwui Enwezor, a poet, art critic, art historian and curator, was a man of astonishing and global influence — an art world giant, whose legacy has not, and probably will not, be forgotten for many years to come.
Born on 23 October 1963 in Calabar, a port city in the South of Nigeria, Enwezor was part of an affluent Igbo family. The reality of the Biafran war…