Words on art: The writings of Okwui Enwezor

Daniel Boyd reinterprets Eurocentric perspectives on Australian history, drawing upon historical photographs, art history and his own cultural heritage as a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung, Yuggera, ni-Vanuatu man. Known for his distinctive use of the dot, or ‘lens’, Boyd’s work also considers how history and identity are shaped by how and what we choose to see.

Boyd has exhibited his work nationally and internationally since 2005. His work is held in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; as well as numerous private collections in Australia.

Photograph: James Brown

Professor of Indigenous Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Sydney, Daniel Browning is Bundjalung and Kullilli writer, journalist and radio broadcaster. In a 30-year media career with Australia’s national broadcaster, Daniel read news for youth network triple j, presented and produced curated international award-winning programs on Indigenous art and culture every week for 15 years on Awaye! and established Word Up, a shortform podcast on the revival of Indigenous languages. The former Editor Indigenous Radio at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Daniel also hosted The Art Show from 2021 until 2025. In 2010 he was appointed guest editor of a specialist Indigenous issue of the contemporary art journal Artlink, and was invited back to edit four subsequent issues of what became the annual Artlink Indigenous. His first book, Close to the Subject: Selected Works, which catalogues his freelance writing on the arts, as well as poetry, memoir and his first play, won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. In the same year Daniel was also the recipient of the Indigenous Writing Prize, a category of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. A finalist in the June Andrews Prize for Arts Journalism in 2024, he jointly won the Walkley Foundation’s inaugural Arts Journalism and Arts Criticism Prize in 2025 with ABC colleagues Rudi Bremer and Teresa Tan. His writing on contemporary Indigenous art has been published widely both nationally and internationally in ArtReview, Art Basel, Gradhiva, E-flux, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Overland, The Guardian, The Age, Afrikadaa, Harper’s Bazaar, Conde Nast Traveler and the precursor of Blue Art Journal, Art Monthly. His critical essays have been published in magazines and exhibition catalogues for state and national galleries and in monographs including the latest, Tony Albert’s Not A Souvenir, published by Thames and Hudson.

Suzanne Cotter has held directorial and senior curatorial positions in museums around the world, including Director of the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean Luxembourg (MUDAM), Luxembourg, Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (Portugal), Senior Curator for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation New York, Deputy Director and Senior Curator of Modern Art Oxford (UK), and Curator at the Hayward Gallery, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and the Serpentine Gallery, London. In 2011, Suzanne curated with Rasha Salti the 10th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates.

Throughout her career, Suzanne has worked with some of the world’s most acclaimed contemporary artists and is widely published on their work. She has participated in numerous international contemporary art panels and juries including the Turner Prize, the Hugo Boss Prize and the Pinchuk Prize. A Board member of CIMAM (International Committee for Modern and Contemporary Art Museums) from 2016 until 2025, Suzanne chaired the Outstanding Museum Practices Award steering committee and chaired the Sustainability and Ecology in Museum Practice working group. She currently sits on the Boards of Mophradat, an independent cultural agency that supports artists from the Arab world, and Museums and Galleries NSW.

Through her work with contemporary artists her contributions to culture have been recognised. In 2005 Suzanne was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government. In 2021 she was awarded the Chevalier de l’Order de la Couronne la Chêne of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Cavaliere Osi (Ordine Della Stella D’Italia) awarded by the Republic of Italy.

Louise Neri is an editor, curator and writer and she was the partner of Okwui Enwezor at the time of his death in 2019. She was the inaugural director of Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne from 1984-89.  Between 1990 and 2001 she was US editor of the international art journal Parkett, during which time she co-curated the 1997 Whitney Biennial and the 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998). She was Assistant Curator for the 8th Biennale of Sydney in 1990 and Advisor to the 12th edition in 2000. From 2006 to 2022, she was a senior director at Gagosian during the gallery’s global expansion. As part of her strategic international role, she recruited artists, organized more than 80 exhibitions across the global platform, edited books and organized live discursive events. Neri is Founder and Principal of Extraterritorial, a consulting platform for the arts, and Executive Liaison for the El Anatsui Studio in Accra, Ghana. Her most recent book is Matthew Barney: SECONDARY, a twin volume published by Rizzoli in 2025.
 

Terry Smith is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney and Andrew W Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.

He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and curatorial practice, most recently Curating the complex and the open strike (2021), Iconomy: towards a political economy of images (2022), Fred R Myers, Six paintings from Papunya: a conversation (2024) and the edited volume Okwui Enwezor: selected writings (2025).

A founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he has served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Photograph: Filip Wolak