On the 5th August, 2025, Duke University Press is set to release Okwui Enwezor’s ‘Selected Writings’, edited by Terry Smith.

Okwui Enwezor is widely regarded as a leader among the brilliant curators who emerged in the 1990s to set agendas for understanding the global expansiveness of contemporary art. Among his pathfinding exhibitions were the second Johannesburg Biennale (1997), the paradigm-shifting Documenta 11 (2002), Archive Fever (2008), and Postwar (2016). In addition to breaking ground as a curator, Enwezor was also a prolific critic, essayist, and theorist. 

‘Selected Writings’, a landmark two-volume set, brings together Enwezor’s most influential and foundational works. Spanning a quarter-century, these selections reflect the depth and breadth of Enwezor’s writing and its role in his tireless efforts to decolonise the art world.

Volume 2, Curating the Postcolonial Condition, includes seventeen essays written between 2006 and 2019. Drawn from exhibition catalogues, art journals, interviews with artists, art reviews, curatorial statements, historical studies, and book chapters, these texts show him striving to fulfil the second main ambition that drove his career: enabling a critical, diasporic imagining of postcoloniality that would become pervasive within global art discourse. 

Read the introduction.