A new two-volume collection of Okwui Enwezor's writings, titled "Okwui Enwezor: Selected Writings, Volume 1: Toward a New African Art Discourse" and "Volume 2: Curating the Postcolonial Condition," has been published by Duke University Press in 2025, edited by Terry Smith. Spanning over a thousand pages and covering the years 1994 to 2019, the collection gathers Enwezor's catalog essays, exhibition reviews, and analyses, tracing his evolution as a poet, writer, curator, theorist, educator, and museum director who died in 2019 at age 56.
This collection matters because Enwezor was a transformative figure who fundamentally reshaped the global art world by decentering Western narratives and championing postcolonial perspectives. His landmark 2002 Documenta 11, which expanded the exhibition into platforms across four continents, exemplified his curatorial counterinsurgency against Western epistemological bias. The writings document a pivotal period when biennials proliferated and demands to decolonize museums emerged, making this edition essential for understanding how contemporary art history was rewritten from a global, inclusive standpoint.