Tribute Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019)

With his insistence on intellectual rigour went an intellectual generosity, an expansiveness of intellectual scope, and a great ability to inspire.

- Ranjit Hoskote

I find it extremely difficult to speak of Okwui Enwezor in the past tense, or to bracket his life within two dates: 23 October 1963 - 15 March 2019. To think that I will never again hear, over the phone, that distinctive baritone voice, its Nigerian and Commonwealth tonalities clear beneath decades of Americanisation: “Hel-LO RAN-jit San!” At some early point, I had begun to call him ‘Okwui-san’; and he, in turn, called me ‘Ranjit-san’. To think that I will never again receive any emails from that simple, precise, resonant address: ‘[e-mail]’. There was, indeed, only one Okwui. The news of his passing came in on 15 March, just as I arrived in Doha to begin installing a large-scale exhibition of M F Husain that I was curating for the Mathaf Museum. He had died in his sleep, in Munich, which had been his home for nearly a decade. Having followed the crests and troughs of his courageous battle with his affliction since early 2016, we — his friends and colleagues — had known for a few months that it would be a matter of time before he left us. But nothing can ever prepare anyone for the finality of death.