1. Okwui Enwezor was born on October 23,1963, to Okwuchukwu Emmanuel Enwezor in Calabar, the capital city of Cross Rivers State in south-south Nigeria, he was the youngest son of an affluent Igbo family from Awkuzu, Anambra State in the southeastern part of Nigeria.
Okwui Enwezor moved around several times with his family on account of the civil war before settling in Enugu where he spent most of his formative years.
Okwui Enwezor commenced tertiary education at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka but, in 1982 at the age of 18, he moved to the Bronx, New York, and transferred to the New Jersey City University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.
When Enwezor graduated, he moved to downtown New York City and took up poetry.
Okwui Enwezor performed at the Knitting Factory and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village.
Okwui Enwezor recruited scholars and artists such as Olu Oguibe and Carl Hancock Rux to edit the inaugural issue and write for it.
Okwui Enwezor was the director of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany.
Okwui Enwezor had the roles of adjunct curator of the International Center of Photography in New York City, and Joanne Cassulo Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.
In 2013, Okwui Enwezor was appointed curator of the 2015 Venice Biennale, making him the first African-born curator in the exhibition's 120-year history.
Previously, Okwui Enwezor was the artistic director of the Documenta 11 in Germany, as the first non-European to hold the job.
Okwui Enwezor served as artistic director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo de Sevilla, in Seville, Spain, the 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, and the Triennale d'Art Contemporain of Paris at the Palais de Tokyo.
Okwui Enwezor served as co-curator of the Echigo-Tsumari Sculpture Biennale in Japan; Cinco Continente: Biennale of Painting, Mexico City; and Stan Douglas: Le Detroit, Art Institute of Chicago.
Okwui Enwezor was named an adjunct curator at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998.
Okwui Enwezor organized The Rise and Fall of Apartheid for the International Center for Photography, New York, in 2012, co-curated with Rory Bester and "Meeting Points 6", a multidisciplinary exhibition and programs "which took place in nine Middle East, North African and European cities, from Ramallah to Tangier to Berlin", then at the Beirut Art Center in April 2011.
Okwui Enwezor served on numerous juries, advisory bodies, and curatorial teams including: the advisory team of Carnegie International in 1999; Venice Biennale; Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum; Foto Press, Barcelona; Carnegie Prize; International Center for Photography Infinity Awards; Visible Award; Young Palestinian Artist Award, Ramallah; and the Cairo, Istanbul, Sharjah, and Shanghai Biennales.
Okwui Enwezor was a member of the jury that selected Isa Genzken for the Nasher Prize in 2019.
From 2005 to 2009, Okwui Enwezor was Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute.
Okwui Enwezor held positions as Visiting Professor in art history at University of Pittsburgh; Columbia University, New York; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and University of Umea, Sweden.
Okwui Enwezor was the founding editor and publisher of the critical art journal Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art established in 1994, and currently published by Duke University Press.
Okwui Enwezor's writings have appeared in numerous journals, catalogues, books, and magazines including: Third Text, Documents, Texte zur Kunst, Grand Street, Parkett, Artforum, Frieze, Art Journal, Research in African Literatures, Index on Censorship, Engage, Glendora, and Atlantica.
In 2008, the German magazine 032c published a somewhat controversial interview with Okwui Enwezor, conducted by German novelist Joachim Bessing.
Okwui Enwezor is the editor of a four-volume publication of Documenta 11 Platforms: Democracy Unrealized; Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation; Creolite and Creolization; Under Siege: Four African Cities, Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos.
In 2006, Okwui Enwezor received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association.
In June 2018, Okwui Enwezor signed a separation agreement with Munich Haus der Kunst, partly because his battle with cancer took a more challenging turn.