Azu Nwagbogu

Last updated

Azu Nwagbogu (born 1975) is a Nigerian art curator and National Geographic Explorer at Large. [1] [2] He is the Founder and Director of the African Artists' Foundation, the LagosPhoto Festival and creator of Art Base Africa, an emerging virtual space dedicated to exploring and understanding contemporary African art and diaspora. [3] He was awarded "Curator of Year" by the Royal Photographic Society in 2021, [4] and included on the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. [5] [6] He will curate Benin's inaugural pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. [7] [8]

Contents

Life and work

Azu Nwagbogu was born in 1975 in Lagos, Nigeria. His higher education includes degrees from the University of Benin in Benin, Nigeria in 1997 and The University of Cambridge in 2005. [9]

In 2007, he established The African Artists' Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organization based in Lagos, Nigeria. The African Artists' Foundation promotes African art and its artists through exhibitions, festivals, competitions, residencies, and workshops. The African Artists' Foundation has with the establishment of the National Art Competition in 2008, LagosPhoto Festival in 2010 and its residency program raised international awareness to African creativity.

Working as a freelance curator, he has curated exhibitions at institutions globally including 'This is Lagos' at the African Artists' Foundation (2009), 'Dey Your Lane! Lagos Variations' at BOZAR The Centre for Fine Arts (2016), [10] 'Tear my Bra' for the Rencontres d'Arles (2016), [11] 'Samuel Fosso: An African Odyssey' for Photo Espana in Madrid (2018) [12] and 'James Ostrer: Johnny Just Came' at the Gazelli Art House, London (2018). [13]  In 2018, he curated the exhibition 'Colomental' at the Staatliche Museen which explored ideas to expand a Museum's scope beyond Western notions and how to incorporate trans-cultural and non-Western artistic tendencies. [14]

In 2017, he was appointed Curator at Large of Photography at the Zeitz MOCAA Museum, Cape Town, South Africa. [15] He became Chief Curator the following year and served as Director till 2018. In 2019, he curated the exhibition 'Still Here Tomorrow to High Five You Yesterday', which included work from 40 artists from Africa and its diaspora. [16] The exhibition addressed themes of travel and migration through imagined and alternative realities. That same year, he curated the exhibition 'Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawing to Work', which presented the work of artist William Kentridge, including works on view for the first time in South Africa. [17]

In 2021, he launched the restitution project 'Searching For Prince Adewale Oyenuga' in Malaga and Lagos. [18] [19] In 2022, Nwagbogu launched the exhibition project, 'Dig Where You Stand, From Coast to Coast (DWYS)' which presented a new model of engagement with questions of decolonization, restitution, and repatriation. [20] The exhibition was first presented at Ibrahim Mahama's Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, Ghana. The exhibition series explored the regenerative potential of art across the African continent and its diasporas by shifting the decolonial paradigm away from Western museums. [21]

In 2022, Azu Nwagbogu was appointed as one of the first curators of Buro Stedelijk, a new platform for contemporary African art based in Amsterdam. [22] In 2023, he was named 'Explorer at Large' by the National Geographic Society, recognizing his commitment to documenting the world's diverse cultures and environments. [23]

He was appointed chief curator of Benin's inaugural pavilion at the Venice Biennale by President Patrice Talon. [24] [25] The 2024 pavilion will address questions of restitution with site-specific artworks by artists Romuald Hazoumé, Chloe Quenum, Ishola Akpo and Moufoli Bello. [26] The artworks will explore African feminism and draw on the Gelede which is a ceremony performed by women in tribute to the primordial mother, and a means of celebrating the spiritual and physical roles of women in Yoruba societies. [27] Nwagbogu has explained that the pavilion is an extension of the 2022 exhibition 'The Art of Benin of Yesterday and Today: from Restitution to Revelation', which presented 26 Beninois objects looted by the French army in 1892 but eventually returned to the country by France's Quai Branly Museum. The exhibition included contemporary artworks that responded to the 200-year-old looted objects. Nwagbogu will in a similar way present ways to restitute knowledge through art. [28]

He has served on juries, advisory boards, and curatorial teams including the Dutch Doc (2012–15), POPCAP Photography Awards (2012–22), Prisma Photography Award (2015), Greenpeace Photo Award (2016), New York Times Portfolio Review (2017–20), Magnum Photography Award (2017), [29] W. Eugene Smith Award (2018), Photo Espana (2018), Foam Paul Huf Award (2019), Wellcome Photography Prize (2019), The World Press Photo (2020), Social Impact Art Prize (2020), Photo Vogue Festival (2015 -), [30] the Prix Carmignac (2022), Leica Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA) (2022), Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography (2022), Head-On Photo Awards and FORMAT Festival (2022).

Publications

In 2014, he founded the online journal Art Base Africa which focuses on contemporary art from Africa and Diaspora.

He has contributed to several publications, including Martin Roemers: Metropolis (2016), Joana Choumali: Hââbré, the last generation (2018), Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design (2015), Africa Under the Prism Contemporary African Photography from LagosPhoto Festival (2015), Dey your Lane! Lagos Variations (2015) and Raquel Van Haver - Spirits Of The Soil (2018). [31]

Recognition

In 2021, Azu Nwagbogu was awarded 'Curator of Year' by the Royal Photographic Society in the United Kingdom. [32] He was ranked 87 in ArtReview's guide to the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art and also appeared in 2021 and 2022. [33] [34] He was nominated as Curator for the Prix Decouverte Rencontres d'Arles (2014), Photoquai (2015), Photolux Festival (2015) and Breda Photo (2018).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venice Biennale</span> International arts exhibition in Italy

The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It focuses on contemporary art, and includes events for art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre. Two main components of the festival are known as the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale, which are held in alternating years. The others – Biennale Musica, Biennale Teatro, Venice Film Festival, and Venice Dance Biennale – are held annually. The main exhibition held in Castello alternates between art and architecture, and there are around 30 permanent pavilions built by different countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bisi Silva</span> Nigerian contemporary art curator

Bisi Silva was a Nigerian contemporary art curator based in Lagos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracey Rose</span> South African artist (born 1974)

Tracey Rose is a South African artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. Rose is best known for her performances, video installations, and photographs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owanto</span> British Gabonese artist

Owanto is a British Gabonese artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lagos Photo</span>

LagosPhoto Festival is the largest international photography festival in Nigeria and attracts over 20.000 visitors annually. Founded in 2010 by Azu Nwagbogu of the African Artists Foundation, the festival spotlights emerging and established photographers from Africa and internationally. With a strong focus on presenting historical and contemporary stories from the African continent, the month-long festival takes place at various indoor and outdoor venues and includes exhibitions, events, workshops, residencies, talks and digital programs. Some of the photographers and artists who have taken part are Viviane Sassen, Samuel Fosso, Hassan Hajjaj, Maimouna Guerresi, and Zanele Muholi.

The African Artists' Foundation (AAF) is a non-profit organization, based in Lagos, Nigeria. It was founded in 2007 by Azu Nwagbogu, as a platform for contemporary African art and artists working across photography, fine art, video, ceramics, sculpture, performances, writing and curation. The African Artists' Foundation has through the establishment of LagosPhoto festival, National Art Competition and its residency program raised international awareness to African creativity by also collaborating with institutions, foundations, biennales and festivals globally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Koyo Kouoh</span> Cameroonian art curator (b. 1967)

Koyo Kouoh is a Cameroonian-born curator who has been serving as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town since 2019. In 2015, the New York Times called her "one of Africa’s pre-eminent art curators and managers", and from 2014 to 2022, she was annually named one of the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview.

David Ejikeme Uzochukwu is an Austrian–Nigerian art photographer with a focus on portrait photography who lives and works in Brussels and Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angolan pavilion</span> Venice Biennale national pavilion

The Angolan pavilion, representing the nation of Angola, has participated in the Venice Biennale since 2013. As one of the biennial international art exhibition's national pavilions, Angola mounts a show in a Venetian palazzo outside Venice's Giardini. The first Angolan pavilion, which featured the photography of Edson Chagas, became the first African national pavilion to receive the biennial's top prize, the Golden Lion for best national pavilion. Chagas displayed poster-sized photographs of resituated, abandoned objects and weathered architecture in the Angolan capital of Luanda. Reviewers praised the interplay between the photographed subject matter and the Italian Renaissance artwork that adorned the hosting palazzo's walls. The 2015 Biennale hosted a group show of five Angolan artists on themes of intergenerational dialogue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa</span> Art museum, design/textile museum, historic site in Cape Town, South Africa

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa is a public non-profit museum in Cape Town, South Africa. Zeitz MOCAA opened on September 22, 2017 as the largest museum of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. The museum is located in the Silo District at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town. A retail and hospitality property, the Waterfront receives around 24 million local and international visitors per year.

Adenrele Sonariwo is a Nigerian entrepreneur and art curator. She is the founder of the Rele Art Gallery on Military Street, Onikan, Lagos Island, Lagos, Nigeria as well as the Rele Art Gallery on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California. Rele Gallery is the first African contemporary art gallery to establish an outpost in Los Angeles. Sonariwo was the lead curator of the first Nigerian pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Alongside the Rele Art Gallery, Sonariwo is also the founding director of the Rele Arts Foundation. The foundation's projects include the annual young Contemporaries programme, which offers grants, mentorship, residences and training to a small group of emerging artists, an opportunity that results in an exhibition hosted at the gallery.

Natalie King is an Australian curator and writer working in Melbourne, Australia. She specializes in Australian and international programs for contemporary art and visual culture. This includes exhibitions, publications, workshops, lectures and cultural partnerships across contemporary art and indigenous culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung</span> Cameroonian artist and curator (born 1977)

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a contemporary art curator and writer. He lives in Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean pavilion</span> South Korean presence at the Venice Biennale

The Korean pavilion houses South Korea's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.

Kadara Enyeasi is a Nigerian fine art photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amina Zoubir</span> Contemporary artist, director, and video art curator

Amina Zoubir is a contemporary artist, filmmaker and performer from Algiers, Algeria. She is known as a feminist performer through video-actions entitled Take your place, which she directed in 2012 during the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence, aiming to question gender issues and conditions of women in Algerian society. She has worked with different art mediums such as sculpture, drawing, installation art, performance and video art. Her work relates to notions of body language in specific spaces of North Africa territories.

The 60th Venice Biennale is an international contemporary art exhibition held between April and November 2024. The Venice Biennale takes place every two years in Venice, Italy, with some limited exceptions. Artistic director Adriano Pedrosa curated its central exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere, and 88 countries contributed national pavilions.

Adriano Pedrosa is a Brazilian curator. He is the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and curated the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Everything Precious Is Fragile is an art exhibition organized by the curatorial team of Yassine Lassissi and Franck Houndégla led by Azu Nwagbogu for Benin's first national pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

The 61st Venice Biennale is an upcoming international contemporary art exhibition to be held in 2026. The Venice Biennale takes place every two years in Venice, Italy.

References

  1. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu | World Press Photo". www.worldpressphoto.org. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  2. ↑ O'Hagan, Sean (2020-11-10). "'We have lost a limb': Azu Nwagbogu, the visionary curator bringing African art home". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  3. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  4. ↑ "Acclaimed curator Azu Nwagbogu salutes a favourite artist". rps.org. 2021-11-10. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  5. ↑ "Power 100". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  6. ↑ "Power 100". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  7. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu on Curating the Republic of Benin Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  8. ↑ Dafoe, Taylor (2023-03-15). "The Republic of Benin Is Getting Its First-Ever National Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale". Artnet News. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  9. ↑ O'Hagan, Sean (2020-11-10). "'We have lost a limb': Azu Nwagbogu, the visionary curator bringing African art home". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  10. ↑ "Dey Your Lane ! - Lagos Variations". Contemporary And (in German). Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  11. ↑ d'Arles, Les Rencontres. "Tear My Bra*". www.rencontres-arles.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  12. ↑ "Samuel Fosso PHotoESPAÑA Award & Leopoldo Zugaza Bartolomé Ros Award". PHotoESPAÑA (in Spanish). 2018-06-04. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  13. ↑ "Johnny Just Came | 8 June - 22 July 2018". Gazelli Art House. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  14. ↑ Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu. "Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Home". Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  15. ↑ AZU NWAGBOGU Curator at Large of Photography, Roger Ballen Foundation Centre for Photography, Zeitz MOCAA, Retrieved 1 April 2024
  16. ↑ "Still Here Tomorrow To High Five You Yesterday..." Zeitz MOCAA. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  17. ↑ "Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings To Work". Zeitz MOCAA. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  18. ↑ "52 years after, Oyenuga's suitcase back home". The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World News. 2022-12-28. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  19. ↑ "Search: Prince Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga". British Photographic History. 2022-03-20. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  20. ↑ "Dig Where You Stand - Group Show". Contemporary And (in German). Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  21. ↑ "At the Palais de Lomé, an Exhibition Asks Visitors to 'Dig Where You Stand' - Okayplayer". www.okayafrica.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  22. ↑ "Rita Ouédraogo and Azu Nwagbogu Are the First Curators of Buro Stedelijk". Contemporary And (in German). Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  23. ↑ "National Geographic Society Names Azu Nwagbogu Explorer at Large". news.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  24. ↑ "Curator Azu Nwagbogu on Restitution, Collaboration and African Feminism". Observer. 2023-09-14. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  25. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu on Curating the Republic of Benin Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  26. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu". Benin Pavilion (in French). Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  27. ↑ Dafoe, Taylor (2023-03-15). "The Republic of Benin Is Getting Its First-Ever National Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale". Artnet News. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  28. ↑ Kan, Toni (2023-04-02). "Azu Nwagbogu to curate Benin's first ever Venice Biennale pavilion in 2024". The Lagos Review. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  29. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu on Contemporary Photography in Africa • Magnum Photos Magnum Photos". Magnum Photos. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  30. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu". Vogue. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  31. ↑ "Publication: Raquel van Haver, Spirits of the Soil - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam". Larkin Durey. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  32. ↑ "Acclaimed curator Azu Nwagbogu salutes a favourite artist". rps.org. 2021-11-10. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  33. ↑ "Power 100". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
  34. ↑ "Azu Nwagbogu". artreview.com. Retrieved 2024-04-01.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.