Ekow Eshun

Ekow Eshun
Born	(1968-05-27) 27 May 1968 (age 56) London, England
Nationality	British
Education	Kingsbury High School; London School of Economics
Occupation(s)	Writer, journalist, broadcaster, curator
Known for	Cultural commentary
Website	ekoweshun.co.uk

Ekow Eshun (born 27 May 1968) is a British writer, journalist, broadcaster, and curator.

Eshun rose to prominence as a trailblazer in British culture. He was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK (Arena Magazine in 1997)^[1] and continued to break ground as the first Black director of a major arts organisation, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Described as a "cultural polymath" by The Guardian,^[2] he has been at the heart of creative culture in Britain for several decades, authoring books, presenting TV and radio documentaries, curating exhibitions, and chairing high-profile lectures.

Eshun curated In the Black Fantastic at London's Hayward Gallery in July 2022,^[3] a landmark exhibition of visionary Black artists exploring myth, science fiction and Afrofuturism. The show was critically acclaimed, being called "Spectacular from first to last" by The Observer.^[4] The Evening Standard said: "There is "There is unlikely to be a better show this year."^[5]

As Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group^[6] in Trafalgar Square, Eshun leads one of the most important public arts programmes in the world.

Ekow Eshun was born in London, England. His family are Fante from Ghana. His father was a supporter of Kwame Nkrumah and was working at the Ghanaian High Commission in London when Nkrumah was overthrown in a military–police coup in February 1966.

Although three years (1971–74) of Eshun's childhood were spent in Accra, for the most part, he was brought up in London,^[7] He attended Kingsbury High School in North West London, later reading history and politics at the London School of Economics (LSE).^[8][9] During his time at LSE, he edited both Features and Arts for the student newspaper The Beaver.^[10]

Eshun was the director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2005 to 2010, during a period of turmoil for the organisation.^[11][12] Under his directorship, attendance figures rose by 38 per cent^[13] from 350,000 to 470,000, and two young artists shown in ICA galleries, Enrico David and Mark Leckey, went on to be nominated for the Turner Prize.

Eshun has appeared as a critic on Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4 and formerly on BBC Two's The Review Show.^[14] He appeared in 2009 in the television advertisements for Aviva (formerly Norwich Union). He has also often appeared on More4's topical talk show The Last Word.^[15] In 2019, he was the captain of the London School of Economics team on Christmas University Challenge.^[16] In October 2021, he wrote and presented White Mischief, a three-part documentary on BBC Radio 4 on the history of whiteness.^[17]

Eshun's memoir, Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, published in 2005, deals with a return trip to Ghana, Ghanaian history, and matters of identity and race.^[18] Black Gold of the Sun was nominated for an Orwell Prize in 2006.^[19]

He is the younger brother of writer Kodwo Eshun.

Since 2015, Ekow Eshun has worked as an independent curator working internationally on shows which often focus on race and identity.

The Time is Always Now is a show that Eshun curated for the National Portrait Gallery,^[20] opening in February 2024. It is a major study of the Black figure – and its representation in contemporary art. The exhibition showcases the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Amy Sherald, highlighting the use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, it examines its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced. The exhibition will be on display at The Box in Plymouth from 29 June-29 September 2024 before touring to the USA.

Eshun curated In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery in London in July 2022,^[3] a landmark exhibition of visionary Black artists exploring myth, science fiction and Afrofuturism. The show was critically acclaimed, being called "Spectacular from first to last" by The Observer.^[4] The Evening Standard said: "There is unlikely to be a better show this year."^[5] The show also toured to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam.

To accompany his book and exhibition, In the Black Fantastic, Eshun curated a season of visionary films exploring Black existence through sci-fi, myth and Afrofuturism at the British Film Institute.^[21]

We Are History, was a group exhibition at Somerset House in London ^[22] offering a different perspective on humanity's impact on the planet by tracing the complex interrelations between today's climate crisis and legacies of colonialism. The exhibition, curated by Eshun, won Time Out London's Sustainable Event of the Year prize in 2021.^[23]

Africa State of Mind was an internationally acclaimed survey show heralding a new era in African photography. Africa State of Mind gathered together the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across Africa, including both the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. It is both a summation of new photographic practice from the last decade and an exploration of how contemporary photographers from the continent are exploring ideas of "Africanness" to reveal Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory – a state of mind as much as a geographical place. It first opened at New Art Exchange in Nottingham,^[24] before touring to MOAD San Francisco, 2020,^[25] and Rencontres des Arles, 2021.^[26] Africa State of Mind was also the name of a book of African photography^[27] that Ekow Eshun published with Thames and Hudson.

Made You Look^[28] at The Photographers' Gallery in London was a group show on photography, style and Black dandyism. Describing this exhibition in Wallpaper magazine, Eshun said: "It is about confounding expectations about how black men should look or carry themselves in order to establish a place of personal freedom; a place beyond the white gaze, where the black body is a site of liberation not oppression."^[29]

Eshun's memoir, Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, published in 2005, deals with a return trip to Ghana, Ghanaian history, and matters of identity and race.^[18] Reviewing the book for the New Statesman, Margaret Busby said: "His rich memoir, which comes fittingly adorned with a golden jacket designed by Chris Ofili, attempts to answer the question: 'Where are you from?' Eshun's search for home and identity is sometimes achingly poignant, a story of semi-detachment, of fragmentation and duality, which must have been cathartic to write. 'There is no singularity to truth' is its refrain."^[30] Black Gold of the Sun was nominated for an Orwell Prize in 2006.^[19]

British publishing house Hamish Hamilton has acquired the rights to Eshun’s new book The Stranger, ^[31] described as a “‘powerfully intimate, richly imagined’ investigation into Black masculinity.” The Stranger is “structured around the stories of several remarkable Black men, from the 19th to 21st century and across the global diaspora” and “will set out a ‘radical’ exploration of Black male identity and experience. From Victorian actor Ira Aldridge to philosopher and revolutionary Frantz Fanon to infamous rapper Tupac Shakur, each chapter will find its subject “standing at a crossroads, his life and the society around him in flux”. The book will be published in hardback, e-book and audio in 2024.

In the Black Fantastic is a richly visual book that assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora that embraces ideas of the mythic and the speculative. Neither Afrofuturism nor Magic Realism, but inhabiting its own universe, In the Black Fantastic brings to life a cultural movement that conjures otherworldly visions out of the everyday Black experience – and beyond – looking at how speculative fictions in Black art and culture are boldly reimagining perspectives on race, gender, identity and the body in the 21st century.The book includes an introductory text by Eshun, and extended essays by Eshun, Kameelah L. Martin and Michelle D. Commander.

Africa State of Mind is a mesmerizing,^[32] continent-spanning survey of the most dynamic scenes in contemporary African photography, and an introduction to the creative figures who are making it happen. Dispensing with the western colonial view of Africa in purely geographic or topographic terms, Eshun presents Africa State of Mind in four thematic parts: Hybrid Cities; Inner Landscapes; Zones of Freedom; and Myth and Memory.

Eshun has contributed many essays to major art publications. He wrote an essay for Seeing by Duro Olowu.^[33] Eshun focuses on Olowu's role within Britain’s black and Afro-Caribbean creative community. He is also a contributor to Fashioning masculinities : the art of menswear.^[34] which accompanied a major exhibition at The V&A.

Eshun is an influential writer delivering timely, insightful analysis of complex issues of culture, art and identity. He writes for publications including The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Guardian, and has been a Contributing Editor at Wallpaper. For example, he wrote about Basquiat for The New York Times in 2017.^[35]

From his early days as the Assistant Editor of iconic style magazine The Face, and then editor of Arena men's magazine, Eshun has written influential thought pieces exploring style, masculinity, race and the changing face of modern Britain, and has interviewed iconic figures from Prince and Bjork to Neneh Cherry and Hilary Mantel. In early autumn 1996, Eshun interviewed Prince at his Paisley Park complex outside Minneapolis.^[36]

Presented by Eshun, the film Dark Matter: A History of the Afrofuture (BBC4, 2022)^[37] is an exploration – from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Grace Jones – of how black artists use the sci-fi genre to examine black history and imagine new, alternative futures.^[37]

In White Mischief, a three-part radio series for BBC Radio 4, Eshun traces where whiteness came from and how its power has remained elusive.^[38]

• Episode 1: The background hum
• Episode 2: Kind of nightmarish
• Episode 3: Dream for a moment

In this four-part mini-series, Eshun examines the rich and boundless ways in which artists have engaged with the concept of the "Black Atlantic.^[39]

Books

• In the Black Fantastic,^[40] Thames and Hudson, 2022.
• Africa State of Mind: Contemporary Photography Reimagines a Continent,^[27] Thames and Hudson, 2020.
• Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for home in England and Africa,^[41] Hamish Hamilton, 2005.

Selected essays

• "'I Suck at Love': Nas, Jay-Z and Black Male Vulnerability", in The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century,^[42] Asma Naeem, 2023.
• The New African Portraiture, in The New African Portraiture: Shariat Collections,^[43] Walther & Franz König, 2023.
• "The Hybrid of it all: The Making of Black British Style", in  Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, V&A,^[44] 2022.
• A Conversation between Campbell Addy and Ekow Eshun, in Feeling Seen: The Photographs of Campbell Addy,^[45] Prestel, 2022.
• "Why do we March? Joy Gerrard’s Exhilarating Bodies in Motion", in Joy Gerrard: Precarious Freedom: Crowds, Flags, Barriers, Highlanes Gallery,^[46] 2022.
• "Acts of Rememory", in  Mark Bradford: Agora,^[47] Serralves, 2021
• "Portmanteau Biota", in  Hurvin Anderson: Reverb,^[48] Thomas Dane, 2021.
• "Masterless People: The Free Republic of Raphaël Barontini", in Raphaël Barontini, Marianne Ibrahim Publications,^[49] 2021
• "Black is Ours", in Amoako Boafo, Marianne Ibrahim Publications,^[50] 2021.
• "Duro Oluwo and the Becoming of Black Britain", in Duro Olowu: Seeing,^[51] Prestel, 2020.
• *Ways of Seeing: African Portraiture Looks Back at the Imperial Eye",^[52] in Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, Prestel, 2020.
• "Every Moment Counts",^[53] in  Linda McCartney. The Polaroid Diaries, Taschen,  2019.
• "To make figures and subjects walk into a frame": John Akomfrah in conversation with Ekow Eshun,^[54] in  John Akomfrah: Purple, Barbican, 2017
• "Like Tulips in the Sun: Colonisation and Creolisation in the World Stage":^[55] Jamaica, in Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Jamaica, Stephen Friedman, 2013
• Ekow Eshun Interviews Chris Ofili,^[56] in  Chris Ofili, Tate, 2010

• Full transcript of a talk given by Ekow Eshun about his book Black Gold of the Sun
• Ekow Eshun at IMDb