Emmanuel Iduma
Emmanuel Iduma is a writer, editor and art critic. He is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a book of travel stories published by Cassava Republic Press in 2018; and Farad, a novel republished in North America as The Sound of Things to Come. A Stranger’s Pose was longlisted for the 2019 Ondaatje Prize.
Emmanuel Iduma has contributed essays to a range of magazines and journals, including The New York Review of Books, ARTNews, Art in America, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Guernica, British Journal of Photography, Aperture, and Hyperallergic. He has also contributed to monographs and artists books by Victor Ehikhamenor, Lina Iris Viktor, Dawit L. Petros, Lorenzo Vitturi, Ibrahim Mahama, Todd Webb, Jo Ratcliffe, and Ming Smith.
Emmanuel was invited to contribute a travelogue essay to the catalogue for Carnegie International 2018 and later served on the jury to award its Fine Art Prizes.
From 2009 to 2019, he edited the literary magazine Saraba, supporting the work of new and emerging African writers.
Emmanuel’s editorial work has culminated in two books, Gambit: Newer African Writing (The Mantle, 2014), which he co-edited with Shaun Randol; and Limbe to Lagos: Nonfiction from Cameroon and Nigeria (Goethe Institut, 2018), which he co-edited with Dami Ajayi and Dzekashu Macviban.
The writer worked with Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers’ Organization between 2011 and 2016. He participated in four of its road trips across Africa, publishing short reflections on a dedicated blog. The writer’s work with the group was shown in several group exhibitions, including at the New Museum, Venice Biennale, FOAM, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2016, as Director of Publications for the organization, he was Managing Editor of The Trans-African, a journal of reflections on art and visual culture, where he contributed monthly essays on Nigerian photography. He was later Associate Curator of the first-ever Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and edited the exhibition catalogue. In 2020, he was one of 10 writers invited to participate in Outriders Africa, a journey through several African countries organized by the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Emmanuel studied law at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. He also received an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York and has taught in three of its graduate programs.
The writer’s art writing has been honoured with a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2017), the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory, 2020 the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism by the International Association of Art Critics, USA chapter and was included in Apollo Magazine’s 40 Under 40 list. I Am Still with You, his memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in the U.S., and William Collins in the U.K.
Emmanuel teaches in the MFA Art Writing Program at the School of Visual Arts, New York City.
We are delighted to have Emmanuel Iduma as our MCM feature this week.
Read more about him on mriduma.com