Cameroonian writer, curator, essayist and art critic, specialist in contemporary art and photography in Africa. He publishes his first novel, Cercueil et Cie, in 1985. In 1991, with Jean-Loup Pivin, he co-founds Revue noire, a magazine devoted to contemporary African and non-Western art. He creates the Ethnicolor Festival in 1987, then conceives numerous exhibitions and is one of the first to present the works of contemporary African artists on international stages. He is artistic director of Rencontres de Bamako, the African Biennial of Photography, from 2001 to 2007. He conceives Africa remix, presented in Dusseldorf, London, Paris, Tokyo, Stockholm and Johannesburg. He is the first curator of the first African Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. He directs the Luanda and Douala triennials. He conceives the exhibition The Divine Comedy in Frankfurt, then in Savannah, USA and finally at the Smithsonian African Art Museum, which brings together 40 African artists around the work of Dante. The exhibition is divided into 3 worlds: Paradise, Purgatory and Hell, in which the public is invited to travel. Simon Njami was artistic director of the 12th and 13th Dak'art in 2016 and 2018. He has taken part in numerous juries and is secretary of the World Press Photo specialist jury, artistic advisor to the Dokolo Foundation (Luanda) and artistic director of the Donwahi Foundation (Abidjan).