the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar

Okwui Enwezor

Off-Centered: Modernity, Contemporaneity, and Postcolonial Ambivalence

This lecture took place on December 16th, 2008 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union

Lecture introduction

The topic of this lecture is to reflect on how the historical legacy of modernity has impacted the practice, interpretation, historicization, and curating of contemporary art. It will explore the tension between modernity and contemporaneity, globalization and globalism in response to an invitation from the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud to engage with the subject of what he designates as the field of the “Altermodern” the theme of the third Tate Triennial for which he is the artistic director. By Bourriaud’s account, the “Altermodern” represents a critical renewal of contemporary art through practices and strategies by artists who have inexorably moved towards an offshore base, rather than the conventional domain on the mainstream.

About Okwui Enwezor

Okwui Enwezor is Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President of San Francisco Art Institute. He is Adjunct Curator at International Center of Photography and Founding Editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, published by Africana Studies Center at Cornell University. Enwezor has taught at University of Pittsburgh, University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, Columbia University, and University of Umea. In addition he has served as the Artistic Director of 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997), Documenta 11 (2002), 2nd Seville Biennial of Contemporary Art (2006), and 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008). Amongst his exhibitions are “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994;” “In/sight: African Photographers, 1940-Present,” “Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography” and most recently “Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art.” His publications include: Mega Exhibitions: Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form (Fink Verlag and Humboldt University, 2002); Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace (MIT Press, 1999); and most recently Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (Duke University Press, 2008) with Terry Smith and Nancy Condee. Enwezor is the recipient of awards and grants from the Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in criticism from the College Art Association (2006); Agnes Gund Curatorial Award from Independent Curators International; Getty Research Institute; Ford Foundation, a nd Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development.

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