Artist, theorist, curator, and writer, Olu Oguibe was born in Aba, Nigeria in 1964. After immigrating to London to study for a PhD in Art History, he taught at the University of London, prior to relocating to the USA. His writing and art practice engages with postcolonial theory and histories of non-Western contemporary art studies.
Artist, art historian and curator Olu Oguibe was born in the Igbo city of Aba, Nigeria on 14 October 1964. His first experiences of art came from his father, a preacher, school teacher, wood sculptor and sign painter. However, his childhood was disrupted by the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War of 1967-70. Oguibe then attended the University of Nigeria between 1981-86, receiving a BA in Fine and Applied Arts, graduating summa cum laude and valedictorian. 1983-95 he served as Secretary-General of the University of Nigeria’s Student Union. In 1989 he immigrated to London to undertake postgraduate studies, gaining a PhD in Art History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 1992. His doctoral thesis was published as Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West in 1995. Oguibe was inspired by the Black Arts Movement between 1965-75 and the cultural changes impacting practising black artists by the 1990s, also creating artworks influenced by his personal experiences alongside his academic research. After his doctoral studies, Oguibe taught African Literature at SOAS and Critical Theory in the Visual Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London before relocating to the USA in 1995.
Oguibe took on various teaching positions in the USA, at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the University of South Florida, Tampa, where he held the Stuart Golding Endowed Chair in African Art. He subsequently took on the post of Professor of Art and African American Studies at the University of Connecticut. In 2017 he left this position to concentrate on his own art practice and writing full time. Oguibe is also an acclaimed poet, publishing several volumes of his writings. His second collection A Gathering Fear, won the 1992 Christopher Okigbo All-Africa Prize for Literature. His poetry and his artworks - the latter produced across diverse media - reflect upon political and social issues, addressing changes in his life and his migration from Nigeria to London and then to the USA. His art has been shown in major museums and galleries around the world including the Whitechapel Gallery and the Barbican Centre, London; Migros Museum, Zurich; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. In 2007 Oguibe participated in the Venice Biennale — the first year in which Africa was represented with a separate pavilion. In 2017, his artwork Strangers and Refugees Monument, a 52-foot concrete obelisk with the New Testament Phrase ‘I was a Stranger and You Took Me In’ engraved in Arabic, English, German and Turkish, was awarded the Arnold Bode Prize at documenta14 in Kassel, Germany and installed in the city's Konigsplatz. However, it was removed a year later due to concerns about its polarising effect and its focus for extreme right-wing protest; in April 2019 it was re-sited at Kassel's Treppenstraße. Subsequently, the monument has become the catalyst for several related works in other media exploring issues of displacement and hospitality, such as Oguibe’s New Monuments Series (2020) on paper.
Oguibe has also served as curator for a number of international exhibitions and festivals, including Five Continents and One City: 3rd International Salon of Painting at the Museo de la Ciudad, Mexico City (2000); Authentic/Ex-centric: Africa in and out of Africa for the 49th Venice Biennale (2001); Century City, Tate Modern, London (2001); International Video and Media Art Festival, Palacio Postal, Mexico City (2002) and the 2nd Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art, Liguria, Italy (2003). His publications on visual arts and culture have included Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace (MIT Press, 2000) and The Culture Game (University of Minnesota Press, 2003) and he also served as co-editor of the journal Nka: Contemporary African Art, published by Duke University Press.
Oguibe has been a fellow of the Smithsonian Institution; Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, New York City; Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center; and Open Society Foundations, among others. In 2013 he was awarded the Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement. In 2020 he received the Soros Arts Fellowship to develop his conceptual work on themes of refuge, flight, and hospitality. He continues to live and work in the USA. Currently there are no works by Olu Oguibe held in UK public collections.