AZU NWAGBOGU
AZU NWAGBOGU is the founder and director of the African Artists’ Foundation, a Lagos-based organization that promotes art in Africa through exhibitions, festivals, residencies, and workshops. In 2010, he founded LagosPhoto Festival, whose fifteenth edition, “Incarceration,” opens in fall 2025, with Nwagbogu serving as head curator. Formerly the director and chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in Cape Town, Nwagbogu was named a National Geographic Explorer at Large in 2023 and in 2024 curated the first Benin pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
—the Editors
HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE CURATING?
I view curating as a role that has evolved significantly, much like that of a physician or someone working in any field of knowledge that involves some form of gate minding. In an era saturated with both information and misinformation, curating is not about didactically telling stories through objects—as though they were mere pieces of evidence—but about thinking through materials as artifacts of our metaphysical notions of life and of our humanity. It is a relentless pursuit of truth and freedom of expression, developed in collaboration with artists whose profound impulses speak to our times. It is a fervent listening process that requires fostering new intellectual and moral pathways.
WHAT WAS THE LAST SHOW YOU TRAVELED TO SEE?
In September, I traveled to Warsaw to see “Beyond the Line,” an exhibition featuring Sean Scully and Stefan Gierowski, curated by Joachim Pissarro at the Stefan Gierowski Foundation.
The exhibition brought together two post–World War II pioneers of abstract art, born two decades apart on opposite sides of Europe—Scully in Ireland and Gierowski in Poland. Their overlapping careers span six decades, with each artist developing a distinct approach to abstraction that set them apart from the mainstream. What stands out in their work and biographies is a resolute independence and a shared commitment to “resisting” (a concept embraced by both in different contexts) dominant artistic trends and movements.
WHAT UPCOMING EXHIBITION (BESIDES YOURS) ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT?
I am eagerly anticipating the second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, scheduled from January 25 to May 25, 2025. An offshoot of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, this edition of the show is overseen by artistic directors Amin Jaffer, Julian Raby, and Abdulrahman Azzam. Of particular interest is how contemporary artists will reflect on historical objects from Islamic societies and rethink the idea of civilization beyond Western monocultural histories. I was fortunate to attend the second Diriyah Biennale in 2024, curated by Ute Meta Bauer and themed “After Rain,” which was vibrant, revealing, and profound.
WHAT IS ONE SHOW THAT HAD A BIG INFLUENCE ON YOU?
A pivotal exhibition for me was “New Energies,” curated by El Anatsui at the Nimbus Art Centre in Lagos in 2001, showcasing works by recent graduates of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. It profoundly influenced my perception of how materiality could create meaning through form and synchronize energies. Nimbus was founded by my elder brother, Chike Nwagbogu, and the work he did there was influential in sparking and guiding my inchoate interests in curatorial practice.
WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF CRITICISM YOU’VE READ RECENTLY?
I regularly turn to Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human (2024)by Cole Arthur Riley; I think it’s perfect as a ritual to keep me hypervigilant. It’s not art criticism as such but is a whisper, a prayer, and a form of exploration of our contemporary life—one that is not cynical but restorative and lenitive. Also, I often find myself revisiting anything and everything ever written by the late A. A. Gill. Looking through his archives, I recently reread a 2013 essay on the migrant crisis in Lampedusa, Italy. It ends with this description:
The body of a young African woman with her baby, born to the deep, still joined to her by its umbilical cord. In labour, she drowned. Its first breath is the great salt tears of the sea. The sailors who formed a chain to bring the infant to the light used to the horror of this desperate crossing sobbed for this nameless child of a nameless mother who was born one of us, a European.
It’s journalistic prose, yet it is poetic and moving.
IS THERE A PARTICULAR IDEA THAT IS INSPIRING YOUR WORK NOW?
Currently, I am concerned with studying the inexorable decay of so-called Western civilization as the moral compass that has guided humanity for the past century. I’m enthused by the prospects of new forms of Pan-Africanism and the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement, advocating for alliances based on equity rather than on hierarchical divides. As tensions rise between the traditional power blocs of East and West, we can all begin to reimagine new forms of solidarity rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATION HAPPENING NOW WITHIN THE CURATORIAL FIELD OR IN THE ARTS MORE BROADLY?
The most critical conversation today is about forming new forms of solidarity. We must move beyond the largely performative contemporary praxis of “decolonization” and toward deeper, more genuine ideas that foster real change.
WHAT DO YOU WISH PEOPLE BETTER UNDERSTOOD ABOUT CURATING?
Shortcuts are handicaps. I wish people understood and cared more about artists, their thoughts, and their evolution and growth, rather than focusing on their careers. I like to think of curating as a calling, like being a monk, or a writer, or something that feels urgent and necessary—a separation from society, as it were. You dip in, but you stay out and apart.
WHAT PIECE OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO AN ASPIRING CURATOR?
Read broadly and voraciously. A second piece of advice is to develop your own style: Embrace everything that makes you unique, as it will enrich and differentiate your curatorial approach.
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A CURATOR CAN DO FOR AN ARTIST?
Act like an earthworm in the soil: unseen yet crucial, working tirelessly to aerate and enrich the environment to allow artists’ ideas to flourish.
