Selected Writings, Volume 1

“This selection of Okwui Enwezor’s writings offers an intimate look into the beliefs that fueled his practice: those of plurality, fluidity, and openness. It is through these writings that we are able to stay the course of Enwezor’s incomparable vision and insist, as he did, on an expansive understanding of the world and all those who inhabit it.”
-- Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem

“In 1997, Okwui Enwezor reflected on the difference between the Johannesburg Biennale, the first major international exhibition of his career, and Documenta, pointedly remarking that we have ‘other priorities.’ This comment not only came to characterize that foray into the world of global curation but became the through line for all of his endeavors. As this volume attests, the stakes of Enwezor’s exhibitions were elucidated in their context and through his writing, which is inextricable from and yet also independent of them. He had a distinct historical, political, worldly, theoretical, and poetic rigor and love for the jostling of ideas, stories, and positions that would set the various fields in which he engaged in new directions through his singular momentum. These assembled texts reflect a lifetime committed to developing his voice, changing the worlds of art, and creating a new language with the intellectual heft, complexity, and dynamism to make a case for his presence and those he championed.”
-- Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, Whitney Museum of American Art