Emmanuel Olunkwa

Olunkwa was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA.[8][9] He took in interest in photography as a teenager in high school.

In 2014, Olunkwa moved to New York and later graduated with a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the Eugene Lang College at the New School with a concentration in Race, Art History, and Architectural Spatiality. In 2021, he graduated with an M.S. in the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices program from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and for his graduate thesis he dissected the spatiality of “Slave Play,” the Tony-nominated production by Jeremy O. Harris about racism and sexual kinks. [10][11][12]

Olunkwa has written features on artists Kara Walker, David Wojnarowicz, Seth Price, John Akomfrah, and Deana Lawson, architects Elizabeth Diller and Mark Wigley, and authors Natasha Stagg, Sarah Schulman, and Andrea Long Chu, amongst others.[13] His photography has been included in Dazed, Garage, Cultured, and e-flux and spans across album covers, magazine profiles, and book covers.[14][15][16]

Olunkwa started E&Ko., a functional furniture line of birch plywood chairs and tables, in 2020.[17][18] The flower-shaped design works have been shown with artists Walter Price, Michael Krebber, Paul Chan, Wade Guyton, and Rachel Harrison.[19] He will be showcasing a new capsule collection of design work for SSENSE in fall of 2021.[20]

That same summer, Olunkwa launched November Magazine, a non-profit dedicated to publishing and programming around contemporary art and culture.[6] The magazine was founded alongside Lauren O'Neill-Butler, and includes Dawn Chan, Aria Dean, and Alec Mapes-Frances as its editors.[21]

In September of 2021, Olunkwa was named editor of Pin-Up Magazine, a bi-annual magazine dedicated to architectural entertainment, becoming its second editor ever succeeding its founder, Felix Burrichter.[22]