Two curators, Azu Nwagbogu and Rita Ouédraogo teamed up for the vacancy in Buro Stedelijk and will take up their position as heads of the new Amsterdam space.
Announced in July, 2022, Buro Stedelijk is an initiative of the Stedelijk Museum in close collaboration with de Rijksakademie and De Ateliers, with the aim to bridge the missing link between the studio practices, academic training programs, the galleries into close dialogue with the museum. The space will be located in the building of the Stedelijk Museum itself and will be headed by Rita Ouédraogo and Azu Nwagbogu. Two independent curators, who have come together and Stedelijk describes will have the greatest possible autonomy over running the new institution.
Azu Nwagbogu
Born in 1975, Azu Nwagbogu is the Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organisation and of the annual LagosPhoto Festival based in Lagos, Nigeria.
He returned to Nigeria in 2006 after studying abroad. Curator Azu Nwagbogu observed that the art scene in Lagos was heavily driven by commercial interests, with few public cultural spaces. In order to support artists and push them forward he founded the African Artists Foundation. A space dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art. The Foundation aims to encourage the highest standard of art in Africa through organizing art exhibitions, festivals, competitions, residencies, and workshops with the aim of unearthing and developing talent, creating societal awareness, and providing a platform to express creativity. In 2010, he created LagosPhoto Festival, the first international arts festival of photography in Nigeria. A month-long festival, with a line up including a variety of art expressions. LagosPhoto aims to establish a community for contemporary photography which will unite local and international artists through images that encapsulate individual experiences and identities from across all of Africa. LagosPhoto presents and educates about photography as it is embodied in the exploration of historical and contemporary issues, the sharing of cultural practices, and the promotion of social programmes.
Nwagbogu was elected as the Interim Director/Head Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa from June 2018 to August 2019. He is the creator of Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary African art. Nwagbogu served as a juror for the Dutch Doc, POPCAP Photography Awards, the WorldPress Photo, Prisma Photography Award (2015), Greenpeace Photo Award (2016) and several others. He is a regular juror for organisations such as Lensculture and Magnum.
For the past 20 years, he has curated private collections for various prominent individuals and corporate organisations in Africa. Nwagbogu obtained a Masters in Public Health from The University of Cambridge. He lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.
Rita Ouédraogo
Rita Ouédraogo is a curator, programmer, writer and researcher, and was curator and program coordinator at Framer Framed in Amsterdam. She was Research Programmer and (Community) Collaboration Officer at the Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC) of the Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde, Wereldmuseum and Afrika Museum in the Netherlands.
Ouédraogo holds a MSc in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam and worked on various projects aimed at making museum collections more widely accessible, as well as on projects outside of institutional structures. Her work is informed by her interest in African diaspora, decolonizing institutions, institutional racism, popular culture and social issues. She researches questions related to cooperation and solidarity that explores modes of collaborative practices across power differentials, especially within a decolonial framework. She is currently based in Amsterdam.
