KJ Abudu is a curator, writer, and scholar-critic based between New York, London, and Lagos. Informed by anti-colonial/imperial critique, black radical thought, and indigenous philosophies, his writings and exhibitions focus on critical art and discursive practices that respond to the world-historical conditions produced by racial/colonial-capitalist modernity. Abudu recently curated Traces of Ecstasy at the 4th Lagos Biennial and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2024). He is currently an associate curator at Swiss Institute, New York, where he oversees public programs and has curated exhibitions including Nolan Oswald Dennis: overturns (for which he convened the Black Earth Study Club) (2025); Deborah-Joyce Holman: Close-Up (2025); Kobby Adi: Cloisters & Instruments (2024); and Tiran Willemse: Dweller (2026). Other exhibitions include Clocking Out: Time Beyond Management, Artists Space and e-flux Screening Room, New York (2023) and Living with Ghosts, Pace Gallery, London, and Wallach Art Gallery, New York (2022). Abudu is the editor of Living with Ghosts: A Reader (Pace Publishing, 2022). His writings have been featured in e-flux, Mousse, Frieze, and numerous other art publications and museum catalogues. He holds an MA in modern and contemporary art: critical and curatorial studies from Columbia University and a BA from Duke University in philosophy and political science. He was a 2022–23 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Two white shirts and a black top. One long-sleeve, two short-sleeve. Two bald heads and a crowned shrub of twists. Relaxed wrists and palms caressing a near-empty wine glass, some hands submerged in pockets, and another gently placed on a hip. Pressed cotton, embroidered lace. A ring, a watch, a necklace. Three radiant gazes. Mbulelo…
