Art, Narratives and Finance

Chika Okeke-Agulu, an artist, curator and art historian, is professor of African and African Diaspora art and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Art and Archaeology and Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. He was recently the Varnedoe Visiting Professor, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (spring 2020). He previously taught at Pennsylvania State University, Williams College, and University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He lives in Princeton (NJ), USA.

His books include Yusuf Grillo: Painting. Lagos. Life (Skira Editore, 2020); Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (Skira Editore, 2016); Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (Duke, 2015); Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2010); Ezumeezu: Essays on Nigerian Art and Architecture, a Festschrift in Honour of Demas Nwoko (Goldline & Jacobs, 2009). He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and maintains the blog Ọfọdunka.

As an art critic, his writings have appeared in The Guardian (Lagos), Daily Times (Lagos), Artforum International (New York), The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Parkett, Art Journal, Art South Africa (Johannesburg), and Bonhams Magazine (London).

He has (co-)organized several major art exhibitions, including El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale (with Okwui Enwezor, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2019), Who Knows Tomorrow (Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany 2010), 5th Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, South Korea, 2004), The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany, 2001), Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK, 1995), Nigerian section, First Johannesburg Biennale, (Johannesburg, South Africa, 1995). He is on the curatorial team of the 15th Sharjah International Biennial (Sharjah, UAE, 2022)

Among his many awards and prizes are: Honorable Mention, The Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication (triennial) Award (Arts Council of African Studies Association, 2017); The Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the most important scholarly work in African Studies published in English during the preceding year (African Studies Association, 2016); and Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (College Art Association, 2016). Okeke-Agulu was the Valedictorian and Class President of the 1990 graduating class, University of Nigeria.

Okeke-Agulu serves on the advisory boards of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre, Tate Modern, London; the Center for the Study of Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and The Josef and Annie Albers Foundation/ Le Korsa, Bët-bi Project. He is the executive board of Princeton in Africa, and the editorial board of African Studies Review.

Azu Nwagbogu is the Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria. Nwagbogu was elected as the Interim Director/Head Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa from June 2018 to August 2019. Nwagbogu also serves as Founder and Director of Lagos Photo Festival, an annual international arts festival of photography held in Lagos. He is the creator of Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary African Art. Nwagbogu served as a juror for the Dutch Doc, POPCAP Photography Awards, the World press Photo, Prisma Photography Award (2015), Greenpeace Photo Award (2016), New York Times Portfolio Review (2017-18), W. Eugene Smith Award (2018), Photo Espana (2018), Foam Paul Huf Award (2019), Wellcome photography prize (2019) and is a regular juror for organisations such as Lensculture and Magnum.

For the past 20 years, he has curated private collections for various prominent individuals and corporate organisations in Africa. Nwagbogu obtained a Masters in Public Health from The University of Cambridge. He lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

Bronwyn Katz is an award winning multi-disciplinary South African artist. Incorporating sculpture, installation, video and performance, Bronwyn’s practice engages with concepts of mapping, memory and language relative to land and culture. Conceptually, her works refer to the political context of their making, embodying subtle acts of resistance that draw attention to the social constructions and boundaries that continue to define those spaces. Bronwyn is also a founding member of iQhiya, an art collective and network of black women artists and cultural workers in South Africa formed in June 2015 in Cape Town.

Bronwyn completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2015, receiving the Simon Gerson Prize at the University of Cape Town for a distinctive body of work related to collective history and memory linked to the spaces and objects around them. Bronwyn has held a number of solo exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions including:

The 12th Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal (2016)
Le jour qui vient – Galerie des Galeries in Paris (2017)
Tell Freedom – Kunsthal KAdE in Amersvoort (2018)
Sculpture – Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port Louis in Mauritius (2018)
A Silent Line, Lives Here at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2018) 
Salvaged Letter at Peres Projects in Berlin (2019) 
Blank Projects in Cape Town (2019)
Là où les eaux se mêlent (Where the water mingles) (Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, 2019)
The Empathy Lab (Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, 2019)
Material Insanity – Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakech (2019)
Road to the Unconscious – Peres Projects in Berlin (2019)