African curators championing the art market have been doing the heavy lifting of directing and redirecting the narratives surrounding African art for a long time. From pavilions at internationally acclaimed biennials, art fairs, and museums, curators have been at the center of promoting African art on a global stage.
Curators like Okwui Enwezor, Bisi Silva, and Koyo Kouoh have engaged with the various iterations of what African art could be through their focus on post-colonial and global themes. Still, in the absence of the late Enwezor and Silva, their practices continue to impact contemporary art history. Starting from curators, the future of contemporary African art is being influenced by collectors and African artists as they take a more collaborative approach.
Who are the African curators championing the art market across Africa and the world?
In creating a diverse and equitable market, African curators are challenging the traditional market norms to encourage investments in African art. In this article, we are spotlighting African curators whose practices and narratives focus on championing the art market: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Folakunle Oshun, and Aindrea Emelife. However, this exploration is just the beginning. We aim to continue highlighting the contributions of more remarkable curators, collectors, and African artists who shape the landscape of contemporary African art in this dedicated series.
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Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Courtesy of Fundação Bienal de São Paulo/Jana Edisonga.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a contemporary African curator and writer living in Berlin. With an academic background in medical biotechnology and biophysics, the Cameroonian curator is known for his multidisciplinary approach that combines institution building as a practice, curatorial praxis emphasizing performativity, sound, and visual arts, critical theory, and discourse.
As one of the driving forces challenging the boundaries and contributing to shaping the future of global contemporary art on many levels, Ndikung has curated international events such as Documenta 14, Rencontres de la Photographie de Bamako, and Dakar Biennale over the years.
He currently works as a professor at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. Before now, he was the director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the founding director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. He was recently announced as the Chief Curator of the 36the Bienal de São Paulo, which is scheduled to happen in 2025.
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Aindrea Emelife
Aindrea Emelife, curator of the Nigerian Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Courtesy of Aindrea Emelife.
Nigerian curator and art historian Aindrea Emelife focuses on modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on the importance of dialogues around colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of representation.
Emelife has received international praise for her exhibitions in museums, galleries, and private collections. She is known for “Black Venus,” a survey of the legacy of the Black woman in visual culture, an exhibition that opened at Fotografiska in New York in May 2022 before touring the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and Somerset House in London in 2023.
In 2023, she was appointed curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the long-awaited Edo Museum of West African Art based in Benin City, Nigeria. She is the lead curator of the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th edition of the long-awaited Venice Biennale, which runs from the 20th of April to the 24th of November, 2024.
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Folakunle Oshun
Folakunle Oshun, founder and director of the Lagos Biennial. Courtesy of the Art Forum.
Folakunle Oshun is an artist and curator from Lagos, Nigeria. His artistic practice engages the relativity of forms and the mapping of orbits and unorthodox spaces. He is the founder and director of the Lagos Biennial, a platform for critical dialogue and the development of contemporary art in Nigeria.
In 2023, he co-curated the group exhibition Lagos Peckham Repeat Pilgrimage to the Lakes at the South London Gallery (2023). Oshun is currently a Doctoral candidate at the Heritage Laboratory of the Cergy Paris University/École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy, where he also teaches.
His research and curatorial interests lie in the potentiality of post-independence state buildings in West Africa as spaces for heritage production. He is focused on curating shows that can capture and respond to the contemporary world’s complexities by artists who are attentive to the political happenings in the world.
This year’s edition of the Lagos Biennial, themed REFUGE, sought to address the concept of the nation-state and critically reflect on Tafawa Balewa Square, the exhibition's location by bringing together artists, researchers, and critics from different corners of the world.