Contemporary black African curatorial practice: three biographic studies in strategy

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is an interpretive study of the emergence of contemporary curatorial practice on the African continent. The inquiry charts the rise of the practice of curating in postcolonial Africa, casting a biographical lens on the curatorial strategies of three pre-eminent contemporary Black-African curators — Koyo Kouoh, Ntone Edjabe and Gabi Ngcobo. It pays particular attention to the conceptual and methodological approaches these individuals have utilized in their negotiation of the emergent genre of curatorial practice on the African continent; in the context of a neoliberalising landscape in the global contemporary art-world. This thesis is an exploration of the present-day expanded role of contemporary curatorial practice, and the nascent formations of cultural production emerging from the rise of the curator — models of which have helped to situate the role of the curatorial practitioner at the political centre of our contemporary moment in the African and global art-world.