Ph. Cyrille Choupas
Simon Njami is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic and novelist.
Njami was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art.
He has served as artistic director of the first Johannesburg art fair in 2008, the Bamako photography biennale for ten years and the Dak’art Biennale (2016-2018). He co-curated the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. He also curated Afriques Capitales (Paris, Lille 2017), African Metropolis (Maxxi 2018), The Studio (Kampala Biennale 2019), This space between us (Las Palmas 2020), Materia Prima (San Gimignano 2021), amongst others. Njami has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, including the ground-breaking Africa Remix (2004-2007) and the first African Art Fair, held in Johannesburg in 2008.
In 1998, he created the Pan African master classes in photography, with the Goethe Institut and directed it over 12 years, and set up the collection of contemporary art for the Memorial Acte museum in Guadeloupe. He published and edited numerous books among which the latest Stories Histories, the story of Revue noire (2020).
