Akwaeke Emezi and ruby onyinyechi amanze in conversation

Hosted by Curator of Frieze New York Talks 2021 and Faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Amy Zion and Frieze New York Director of Programming, Loring Randolph

Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature; and Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Their debut poetry collection, Content Warning: Everything, will be published by Copper Canyon in 2022, and their forthcoming memoir, Dear Senthuran, will be published by Riverhead in June 2021. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation, they are based in liminal spaces.

ruby onyinyechi amanze (b. 1982, Port-Harcourt, Nigeria) is a Philedelphia-based artist of Nigerian descent and British upbringing whose creative practices and processes focus on producing mixed media, paper-based drawings and works. Her art draws inspiration from photography, textiles, architecture and print-making. amanze’s practice builds around questions of how to create drawings that maintain paper’s essence of weightlessness. The large-scaled and multi-dimensional drawings are part of an ongoing, yet non-linear narrative that employ the malleability of space as the primary antagonist.