Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

"Originally trained in biophysics and biotechnology, Ndikung changed tack in 2009 to found the art space SAVVY Contemporary in a former storefront in Berlin's Neukölln neighborhood. In the years since, SAVVY has become a pillar of the city's artistic community, hosting talks, cooking sessions, concerts, and exhibitions by artists, curators, and researchers working across the non-Western world and the Global South."

"More crucial than defining curating are the questions of what curating does and performs. Curatorial practice is an exercise in spatial strategies: reflecting, putting in place, and translating ideas while considering the politics and poetics of space. It's also about the staging of wonder, fabulation, and storytelling. Chinua Achebe was once asked about the importance of stories. He responded that "your humanity is contingent on the humanity of your neighbor." For me, that's foundational."

Ndikung trained in biophysics and biotechnology before founding SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin's Neukölln. SAVVY became a pillar of Berlin's artistic community, hosting talks, performances, and exhibitions by practitioners from the non-Western world and the Global South. In 2023 Ndikung left SAVVY to direct Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Ndikung is directing the Thirty-Sixth São Paulo Bienal, "Not All Travellers Walk Roads-Of Humanity as Practice," centering bird migration and "conjugating humanity." Curatorial practice is framed as a spatial strategy that stages wonder, storytelling, and experimentation like a laboratory, jam session, or DJ set. Chinua Achebe's phrase "your humanity is contingent on the humanity of your neighbor" is invoked as foundational.

Read at Artforum