Okwuchukwu Emmanuel Enwezor

In the late 1990s, one of the primary meeting points for many curators from around the world was, surprisingly, an art fair. Every year in Madrid, ARCO hosted a series of topical talks initiated by the fair’s inaugural director Rosina Gomez-Baeza. It was there, at one of the panels, that Okwui and I first met. In the same year, 1998, we were both invited as speakers to a conference in Copenhagen convened by the artist group Superflex. At a roundtable, Okwui and I got into an argument about the role of gender in Africa compared with Europe. When our session concluded I remember thinking, well, that was that. In reality our relationship had just begun.

We met again the following year at the ARCO panels. Okwui, who had just been appointed artistic director of Documenta 11, asked me if I would consider joining his curatorial team. I was surprised by the invitation given our prior disagreement