Okwui Enwezor moved around several times with his family on account of the civil war before settling in Enugu where he spent most of his formative years.

[8][10] He recruited scholars and artists such as Olu Oguibe and Carl Hancock Rux to edit the inaugural issue and write for it.

[11] In/sight was one of the first shows anywhere to put contemporary art from Africa in the historical and political context of colonial withdrawal and the emergence of independent African states.

He organized The Rise and Fall of Apartheid for the International Center for Photography, New York, in 2012, co-curated with Rory Bester[22] and "Meeting Points 6", a multidisciplinary exhibition and programs "which took place in nine Middle East, North African and European cities, from Ramallah to Tangier to Berlin", then at the Beirut Art Center in April 2011.

[27] In February 2021, the exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, which was created by Enzweor, opened at the New Museum in New York.

[30][10] Just as Museum of Modern Art adjunct P.S.1 prepared to open the ambitious The Short Century: Liberation and Independence Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 on February 10, 2002, Enwezor, then curator of the show, was hit with allegations of rape and violence against women.

An email purporting to be from a non-existent group called South African Women against Abuse in the Arts circulated to art-world inboxes with a series of ugly accusations against Enwezor, then also curator of Documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany.

[citation needed] From 2005 to 2009, Enwezor was Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute.

In June 2018, Enwezor signed a separation agreement with Munich Haus der Kunst, partly because his battle with cancer took a more challenging turn.