The New York-based Independent Curators International will present the 2023 Leo Award to Uzodinma Iweala, the CEO of the Africa Center. The award will be presented at the ICI’s upcoming Fall Benefit and Auction, which will take place on October 26, 2023.
The Leo Award, named after the legendary art dealer and early ICI supporter Leo Castelli, is awarded in recognition of those who have shown extraordinary support to curators and artists and created new infrastructures that serve a broader art world.
Iweala assumed the position of CEO in 2018. Since then, he has worked with his team to create a space in New York for African art. The Center has created several public art projects on the plaza of their Harlem building, serving as a focal point for local communities to come together via art, including the Black Lives Matter commemoration on Museum Mile from 2020 to 2023.
“I am honored to accept this award on behalf of The Africa Center team. Nurturing and cultivating artistic and curatorial talents from Africa and its Diaspora has long been central to ICI’s mission and work. Having been the inaugural home for States of Becoming, The Africa Center takes immense pride in our partnership. We eagerly anticipate engaging and amplifying more creative voices from the African continent who are part of The Africa Center and ICI communities. Thank you to Renaud and the ICI team for bestowing us with this honor.“
– Uzodinma Iweala said.
Since its founding in 1975, ICI has offered a special support system for curators and contemporary art around the globe, including more than 10 years of involvement in Africa. ICI has established networks for knowledge exchange between the U.S. and Africa, as well as inside the continent and among its Diaspora, through initiatives including the Curatorial Intensive, Curatorial Research Fellowships, and traveling exhibitions.
“All of us at ICI are delighted to honor Uzo and his team with ICI’s 2023 Leo Award. They have been inspirational collaborators. We are grateful for our meaningful partnership with The Africa Center, which will continue to play an important part in shaping our programs for years to come. Uzo’s vision and the values manifested in the Center—collaboration, empowerment, global solidarity, generative thinking—resonate in so many ways with ICI’s mission.”
– said Renaud Proch, ICI’s Executive & Artistic Director.
Uzodinma Iweala co-founded and served as CEO and editor-in-chief of the magazine Ventures Africa before accepting his position at the Africa Center. He is also well known for his writings that focus on African and diasporic experiences. He is also well known for his writing centering African and diasporic experiences: He is the author of the novel Speak No Evil (2018), the tale of a queer Nigerian American youth living in Washington, DC, which investigates issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and diaspora; and the nonfiction Our Kind of People (2012), about AIDS in Nigeria. His 2005 debut, the novel Beasts of No Nation, about a West African boy forced to become a child soldier, won the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was eventually adapted as a film.
