Writer, Art Critic and Curator
Simon Njami is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic and novelist. He studied comparative literature, philosophy and law at Paris Sorbonne University.
In 1991, he co-founded Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African and non-Western art, where he served as editor in chief from 1991 to 2000. He was artistic director of theinaugural Joburg Art Fairin 2008 and the Bamako Encounters Photography Biennale from 1998 to 2006. He was co-curator of the São Paolo Biennale in 2004 and artistic director of the Dak’Art Biennale in 2016 and 2018. He also co-curated the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and is a former member and spokesperson of the Finding Committee of Documenta 16.
He has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, including “Africa Remix” (Paris, Tokyo, Stockholm, Johannesburg, London, 2004/2007) and “The Divine Comedy” (Frankfurt, Washington, Savannah, 2017/2019), among others.
In 2017, he co-founded and currently serves as chief curator of the Something Else contemporary art festival in Cairo. He is president of the FITE (Clermont-Ferrand Textile Biennale) in Lyon, France, and sits on the board of Suza Manifest in Cameroon.
In 2024, he was co-curator of the Socle du Monde Art Festival in Herning, Denmark. He was also the curator of the Ivory Coast Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale and Art Here’s “Awakenings” exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
In 1998, he created a master class in photography with the Goethe Institute and directed it for over 12 years. He also created the AtWork critical thinking workshop with the Moleskine Foundation.
He has published and edited numerous books, including two biographies, “James Baldwin” (1991) and “Léopold Sédar Senghor” (2007), and four novels. He co-published “Stories Histories: The Story of Revue Noire” (2021) and his most recent novel is “The Mechanic of Memories.”
