Voice and Visibility

It was Audre Lorde who said, "My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you."¹

Okwui Enwezor was not a silent man. When he spoke, his voice was unmistakable because we could hear that he was speaking on behalf of African thought and African people. He spoke because he understood there was no other way to claim and hold the territory for those who love poetry, for those who love art, and for those who are proud of the long, vast and complex, potent Mother history of the great original African continent, whose sound has brought humanity to where it is today.

I always felt like Okwui was speaking as a guide and a leader who understood so clearly how truths had been twisted in the Eurocentric-dominated schools of thought and in our countries that had been left mangled and mad with the poison of plunder.

Okwui was the kind of person who could have succeeded in many fields; he was a natural leader. Everything we admired about him, all that I remember, was the embodiment of a proud and purpose-filled voice that was constantly blazing trails and reinforcing and revealing truths about African art, our shared histories, the power of our negritude, and the poetry and potency of human intellect that has been carried along through the sound of African knowledge production.

When I heard Okwui speak, he spoke upward; he enunciated, he pronounced our existence and represented our persistence as committed creators, thinkers, and predecessors who have been at the core of the evolution of humanity and the foundation of human intellect. His voice had urgency, his voice had clarity and depth, his voice wasn't one of excuses or fear or hesitation. He understood that to be silent is to disappear and to be inaudible is to be endangered. Okwui was a direct, deliberate, and courageous thinker, who created an arena that is now full of so many other raucous and roaring voices. This space is swollen with soulful strength, but for just a moment, only a moment, it feels a little quieter.

Wangechi Mutu, Outstretched, 2019. Paper pulp, wood glue, soil, charcoal, pigment, and feathers, 35 7/8 × 63 3/4 × 29 1/2 in. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels