Okwui Enwezor, Nigerian curator, writer, and theorist, redefined curatorial practice through a postcolonial and global lens, challenging the Eurocentric structures that have historically shaped art institutions, from his groundbreaking direction of Documenta XI in 2002—structured across five discursive platforms staged on four continents—to his curatorship of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, Enwezor’s approach foregrounded the political urgency of exhibition-making as an act of epistemic reconfiguration, he understood curation not as aesthetic selection but as a dialogic and critical grammar, engaging with histories of oppression, marginality, and cultural resistance, at Documenta XI, themes like transitional justice, creolization, and urban siege were explored beyond the exhibition space, activating local and global conversations that transcended the traditional pavilion model, similarly, in Venice, All the World’s Futures assembled a polyphonic field of voices—artists, choreographers, composers, writers—articulating the “appearance” and “state” of contemporary conditions, this structure amplified voices from the Global South, particularly African artists, marking the most inclusive edition of the Biennale at the time, his legacy also includes the founding of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, a publication that has profoundly shaped global art discourse by foregrounding African and diasporic perspectives, Enwezor’s method emphasized that every exhibition is a historical intervention, asking what histories are told, who tells them, and in what forms, his contribution, rooted in a refusal of Western exceptionalism, opened curatorial and critical practice to multiplicity, rupture, and political reimagination on a global scale.
Okwui Enwezor, postcolonial curating, Documenta XI, Venice Biennale, Nka journal, global art, African art, critical exhibitions, curatorial theory, decolonial aesthetics
