Simon njami biography
- Simon Njami (1962) is a.
- Simon Njami (born 1962 in Lausanne) is a writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.
- Simon Njami is an independent lecturer, curator, and art critic.
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Simon Njami is an independent lecturer, art critic, novelist and essayist.
He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine “Revue Noire”. His publications include two biographies (James Baldwin, 1991 and Senghor, 2007), and numerous essays for biennales and exhibitions catalogues. Njami has been the artistic director of the Bamako photography biennale from 2000 to 2010, the artistic director of the Dakar Biennale (2026, 2018) and the artistic director of the Kampala Biennale (2018, 2020) and was co-curator with Fernando Alvim of the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.
He has curated numerous exhibitions, including Africa Remix (touring exhibition 2004, 2007), A collective Diary Tel Aviv, 2010, a Useful dream (Brussels, 2010) and the first African Art Fair held in Johannesburg in 2008. Ha was artistic director of the Luanda and Douala triennials, and of the Lubumbashi biennale (2000)
He is the art advisor of the project “At Work” a touring project by Moleskine and created the African mastersclasses in photography
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Simon Njami, Member of the Reiffers Art Initiatives Committee
A specialist in contemporary art and African art, he co-founded in 1991 with Jean-Loup Pivin, the Revue Noire, a magazine devoted to contemporary and non-Western African art. After creating the Ethnicolor Festival in 1987, he conceived numerous exhibitions and was one of the first to present the works of contemporary African artists on international stages. He was the artistic director of the Rencontres de Bamako, the African Biennale of Photography, from 2001 to 2007. Njami co-curated the first African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale and helped develop the first African Contemporary Art Fair, held in Johannesburg in 2008. In 2016 and 2018, Simon Njami is the artistic director of the 12th and 13th edition of Dak’art, the Dakar Biennale. He is also the curator of the exhibition Afriques Capitales which was held at La Villette Paris in spring 2017 and at the Gare Saint-Sauveur in Lille, from April to September 2017. Simon Njami has participated in numerous juries and is the secretary of the specialized jury of
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Simon Njami
Cameroonian art curator
Simon Njami | |
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Simon Njami in 2007 | |
| Born | 1962 (age 62–63) Lausanne |
| Nationality | Cameroon |
| Occupation | Art curator |
Simon Njami (born 1962 in Lausanne) is a writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.
Career
Writing
Njami published his first novel "Cercueil et Cie" in 1985, followed by "Les Enfants de la Cité" in 1987, and "Les Clandestins" and "African Gigolo" in 1989. He has written biographies of James Baldwin and Léopold Sédar Senghor, several short texts, scripts for cinema, and documentary films.
Njami is the co-founder of Revue Noire,[1] a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art, and he was visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego.
Curator
After conceiving the Ethnicolor Festival in Paris in 1987, Njami curated many international exhibitions being among the first ones to think and show African contemporary artists work on international stages. He has served as artistic director of Bamako Encounters
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