We met contemporary art curator Okwui Enwezor in 2005, when Base began designing the identity of San Francisco Art Institute, where he is Dean of Academic Affairs. He’s since curated the Second International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville (2006–07) and the 2008 Gwnangju Biennale, among many other exhibitions, and brought us on to design the identities of both. In that time, we’ve gotten to know Okwui as having an insatiable intellectual curiosity and, as a curator, a remarkable ability to assimilate and re-contextualize cross-cultural elements and orchestrate consistently surprising results.
Base: As an adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography what do you try to bring to that program that is new and fresh?
Okwui Enwezor: I love working at ICP, not least because it has some of the smartest curators in the city, which means that conversations with colleagues there are always compelling. Given the diversity of the think tank there, I can only hope that what bring to ICP helps broaden rather than narrow the conversation.
B: What museums or art foundations do you find have the most exciting and/or relevant programming today?
OE: Quite frankly, I can’t name one. I can’t tell you that museums around the world are that interesting. But I have the greatest respect for the vision of Suzanne Ghez at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. What she has done over nearly four decades is unparalleled. I love what they do at the Schaulager in Basel, but not so much for its relevance than for the formal beauty of its exhibitions. In many ways, though, the programming is quite narrow. So my view is sentimental. I love the Metropolitan Museum in the city; I admire a lot of the large scale shows that LA MoCA specializes in. I must say that my greatest disappointment is always the MoMA. With all its resources, it is to my mind culturally and intellectually stunted. I wish there is more cultural and curatorial diversity in museums. After the election of Barack Obama, it is shocking to think that museums at large are some of the least diverse working environments in the country. I just don’t think it is any longer acceptable to allow unchallenged the lack of diversity in many American museums today. And I don’t mean in the education department. There is a huge failure of political imagination in these institutions. Every year it is the same white directors with poor records that are recycled and the press is deeply complicit in challenging donors and trustees to desegregate the museums. It is really bad.
B: What other curators do you admire?
OE: Must I name names? Well, again, Suzanne Ghez.
B: You are Nigerian but yet a “citizen of the world.” How has your background shaped your perspective on your work?
OE: I am a dual citizen, meaning I have both Nigerian and American citizenship. Being Nigerian is deeply meaningful to me, but nationality is not what drives my work. Ideas are what I base my work on.
B: Africa is experiencing increasingly rapid growth. In fact, Fortune magazine cited sub-Saharan Africa as one of two regions in the world slated to grow in this global recession. How do you feel this growth will affect art and culture in Africa?
OE: Well, the arts have been booming in Africa for some time, but in the kind of commercial sense we witnessed during the frothy market. That said, there are still a great deal of institutional deficits for artists living and working in Africa. But what I admire most about artists in Africa is their resilience, commitment, and political awareness. It is always refreshing to travel on the continent to visit artists and to know that they have a global view of events. Artists are very well informed.
B: Will you play a role in helping Africa to evolve from a cultural point-of-view?
OE: Oh, dear! I think all Africans have a role to play. We can’t just leave it up to the Bonos and Geldofs of the world. In my very limited way, my practice has had a focus on Africa for two decades and will naturally continue, but not because Africa needs my help—it does not—but because it is culturally interesting from the point of view of my research.
B: Through curating, you introduce new ideas and provoke discussion. A loaded question: Do you see doing the same—other vehicles, if you will—in the future?
OE: As you know, I have been discussing closely in the past year with Base, a new vehicle called Chronotope, which I am presently trying to put into shape. I can’t say more, but I don’t intend to stay in one place. There is an Igbo saying that goes like this: “You can’t enjoy the performance of the mobile masquerade from one vantage point.” In other words you have to be as agile as the performer.
B: You, like several members of Base, live in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill area of Brooklyn. What is it that attracts you to the neighborhood?
OE: I have lived in every borough of New York except Staten Island. And Brooklyn by far is the most cosmopolitan of these boroughs. I love living in New York because of the diversity of the city, yet at the same time, at a certain level, New York can tend to be monocultural in terms of the composition of its neighborhoods. Fort Green is very diverse, lively, heterocultural, and incredibly vibrant. I have been in the neighborhood for 17 years, so I have seen its bad and good times.
B: How do you see the world evolving in the coming decades?
OE: If I knew, I would slice and dice it like credit default swaps, sell it in neat, bundled packages to Wall Street and the Treasury department, and retire in peace with a lot of money.
B: What are the greatest challenges we need to overcome?
OE: The fear that we are not good enough.
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