Okwui Enwezor. Photo: Dominik Gigler, 2012
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Wangechi Mutu, Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year 2010, and curator Okwui Enwezor, member of the bank's Global Art Advisory Council
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It’s one of the most prestigious curator positions in the world: Okwui Enwezor has just been appointed artistic director of the next Venice Biennale. Currently director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Enwezor looks back over an impressive career: in 1997 he was artistic director of the Johannesburg Biennial, and in 2002 he was head of documenta 11 in Kassel. These were followed by the 7th Gwangju Biennial in 2008 and the Triennal d’Art Contemporain of 2012, which took place at the Palais de Tokyo
in Paris. Since 2009, Enwezor has been a member of the Deutsche Bank
Global Art Advisory Council. The council advises the bank’s art
department—among other things in their selection of the “Artist of the Year.” It was Enwezor who proposed Victor Man as “Artist of the Year” 2014. Since organizing the 1996 exhibition In/sight on the history of African photography for the New York Guggenheim Museum,
the curator and author, who was born in 1963 in Nigeria, has exerted an
important influence on breaking apart the art establishment’s exclusive
concentration on Europe and America and focusing attention on positions
from the new art centers in Africa, Asia, and South America.
On the occasion of Enwezor’s appointment, Paolo Baratta,
chairman of the Board of Directors of the Venice Biennale, announced:
“Okwui Enwezor has investigated, in particular, the complex phenomenon
of globalization in relation to local roots. His personal experience is
a decisive starting point for the geographic range of his analysis, for
the temporal depth of recent developments in the art world, and for the
variegated richness of the present." After his appointment, Okwui
Enwezor stated: “No event or exhibition of contemporary art has
continuously existed at the confluence of so many historical changes
across the fields of art, politics, technology, and economics, as la
Biennale di Venezia (…) La Biennale di Venezia is the ideal place to
explore all of these dialectical fields of reference, and the
institution of la Biennale itself will be a source of inspiration in
planning the exhibition.”
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