The EMOWAA (Edo Museum of West African Art) Have faith in is delighted to announce the appointments of Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, Nigerian art historian and Professor of African and African Diaspora Artwork at and Director of the System of African Reports at Princeton College and Slade Professor of High-quality Arts at Oxford University, as Senior Advisor, Contemporary and Modern Artwork and Nigerian-British curator Aindrea Emelife as the new Curator of Contemporary and Contemporary Art.
Talking on the need to have to support West African modern day artwork as effectively as cultural heritage, EMOWAA Govt Director Phillip Ihenacho stated, “One of the key worries for museums and heritage establishments in Africa is relevancy to contemporary African modern society. We want to construct infrastructure and programming to celebrate the prosperous traditions of the previous, but also connect to the present arts scene and commit in the skills and understanding that help options for modern creatives and heritage experts.”
The appointments of Emelife and Professor Okeke-Agulu assist EMOWAA’s purpose of building a earth-class museum, study, and schooling advanced connecting West Africa’s historic heritage to its flourishing modern culture.
As EMOWAA’s Present day and Present-day staff, Professor Okeke-Agulu and Emelife will aim on:
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advancing the field of academic exploration in up to date and modern day West African Art
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creating the collection strategy for EMOWAA
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setting up the curatorial framework for the creative district EMOWAA is producing in the heart of Benin Metropolis
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and creating new, multi-faceted narratives and interpretations of West African artwork and history.
Chika Okeke-Agulu
Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu is an artist, critic and artwork historian who specialises in indigenous, modern, and modern day African and African Diaspora art historical past and theory. Born in Umuahia, Nigeria, Professor Okeke-Agulu gained an MFA (Painting) from the College of Nigeria and a PhD (Art Heritage) from Emory College. He has put in much of his vocation doing work at many establishments all over the world and currently serves as the Robert Schirmer Professor of Artwork and Archaeology and African American Scientific tests as properly as the Director, Application in African Experiments and Director, Africa World Initiative at Princeton College. He is also the recent Slade Professor of Great Arts at Oxford College 2022/23.
Professor Okeke-Agulu has co-organised a quantity of exhibitions, this sort of as Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Functions at the Princeton College Artwork Museum (2022) and (with Okwui Enwezor) the travelling study El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale at the Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019). His quite a few other exhibitions contain Who Knows Tomorrow(Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2010) the Fifth Gwangju Biennale (2004) The Brief Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2001) 7 Tales About Present day Art in Africa (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995) and the Nigerian section of the Initially Johannesburg Biennale (1995). He is on the curatorial team of the Sharjah Biennial (2023).
Chika Okeke-Agulu explained, “A undertaking like EMOWAA is prolonged overdue. It has become essential that we uncover a way to analyze, value and rejoice present-day and contemporary art from the African continent, on the African continent. It is remarkable to be part of EMOWAA and play a element advising on how we can acquire new institutional infrastructure to guidance innovative understanding and appreciation of the purpose of artwork and artists in connecting our wealthy cultural histories to who and where we are right now.”
Aindrea Emelife
Emelife, prior to joining EMOWAA, analyzed History of Art to submit-graduate level at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. As a curator and artwork historian, she has led a range of high-profile initiatives with a concentration on modern day and contemporary artwork, dedicating her aim to inquiries close to colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of illustration. Latest exhibitions involve Black Venus, a survey of the legacy of the Black lady in visible society, which opened at Fotografiska NY in 2022 and will tour to MOAD (San Francisco, United states) in early April and Somerset Residence (London, British isles) this July. Emelife’s to start with e book, A Brief History of Protest Artwork, was printed by Tate in March 2022 and she is at the moment doing work on her second ebook with Thames & Hudson, which debuts in 2024. She has contributed essays to several publications, most just lately Revisiting Fashionable British Art (Lund Humphries, 2022). In 2021, Emelife was appointed to the Mayor of London’s Commission for Variety in the Public Realm. Emelife is a Trustee of New Curators.
Aindrea Emelife said, “One of my principal plans as EMOWAA’s freshly appointed Curator, Fashionable and Contemporary is to build on the endeavours to inform our stories and the intricate connections and links that exists – starting up with Nigerian Modernism and boldly reaching to the several corners of West African Present day and Up to date Artwork background, still to be created and still to find out. I am honoured to be element of developing the legacy of Modern-day and Contemporary African Art.”
The EMOWAA Belief, the not-for-gain foundation driving the EMOWAA Pavilion and Museum, was founded in 2019 to guidance the preservation of West African arts, lifestyle, and heritage. The Pavilion is its initial constructing and will dwelling a products investigation lab, understanding and trade services, and archives.
