Ekow Eshun Africa: Image and Identity

Writer, critic and curator Ekow Eshun explores the cultural context of Zanele Muholi’s work; a contemporary Africa where history and modernity, the personal and political exist in vivid tension. As a continent of photographers exploring questions of gender, sexuality and identity, Eshun unlocks the themes and thinking of these artists as they seek to capture the experience of what it means and how it feels to live in Africa today.

Ekow Eshun is a writer, critic and curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing the most prestigious public art programme in the UK, and Creative Director of Calvert 22 Foundation, a leading arts space dedicated to the contemporary culture of Eastern Europe.

Eshun is the curator of exhibitions including Made You Look: dandyism and black masculinity at The Photographer’s Gallery; Power & Architecture: public space and the post-Soviet world and Post-Soviet Visions: image and identity in the new Eastern Europe at Calvert 22.

Eshun’s writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Granta, Vogue, New Statesman and Wired. He is the author of Black Gold of the Sun: searching for home in England and Africa, nominated for the Orwell prize, and the editor of Africa Modern: creating the contemporary art of a continent.

He holds an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University and has been listed by the Evening Standard as one of London’s 1000 Most Influential People. His portrait, by photographer Simon Frederick, is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

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