The 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair has returned to London, where it opened its 12th edition on Thursday, running concurrently with Frieze London. The fair will once again take over a part of Somerset House, which despite a fire on its roof over the summer has remained committed to hosting 1-54. (The galleries where the annual fair takes place were not directly impacted by the fire, which is still being investigated.)
As one of the leading global art fairs dedicated to championing the diverse works of artists from Africa and the diaspora, this edition of 1-54 has brought together over 60 international galleries, a third of which are from the African continent. This iteration has the fair’s highest number of first-time exhibitors and has a special spotlight on Brazilian, Ghanaian, and Moroccan artists and galleries.
“The diversity and richness of the artworks on display reflect the dynamic and evolving nature of contemporary African art, and we are thrilled to be able to provide a platform that celebrates the talents of both established and emerging artists”, 1-54’s founding director Touria El Glaoui told ARTnews.
Below, a look at the best booths at 1-54 London, which closes on October 13.
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Megan Gabrielle Harris at OOA Gallery
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews Upon seeing the paintings in OOA Gallery’s booth, you’re immediately entranced by the dreamy and surrealist landscape by Megan Gabrielle Harris. It’s like looking into another world where life is easy and pleasurable. Set against warm backgrounds, the women look beautiful and are luxuriously dressed in silk, flowing in smooth motion like the tranquil lake in the distance. They are ladies of leisure, relaxing with friends or enjoying their own company. In her tableaux, Harris depicts the art of slow living and the soft life.
Born in Sacramento, California, and of Nigerian ancestry, Harris is inspired by her travels and the places she aims to visit. She explores how Black women navigate and escape societal constraints by creating spaces where they can feel empowered, in tune with themselves and safe. By providing this visual narrative, her goal is for women to live their best lives.
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Sol Golden Sato at The Bomb Factory Art Foundation
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews One of the special projects at 1-54, presented in partnership with London’s Bomb Factory Art Foundation, is Sol Golden Sato’s installation, Ancestral Lungs, exploring the complex connections between life, environment, and migration. Drawing inspiration from his personal experience as a Malawian migrant living in Britain, the exhibition focuses on the removal of plants and the moving of people—whether through forced or voluntary migration. The piece, a grid-like structure housing an ecosystem featuring plants, books, documents, and a bird soundscape, explores how such movements have a geographical and environmental impact and highlights the history of British colonialism and exploitation in Africa and the Caribbean. The installation invites visitors to contemplate the grief that occurs when the land bleeds and that the destruction of nature affects ancestral bonds.
Eponymous with his middle name, the “Golden” series of paintings on display are painted in rich, bold colors. The scenes may look buoyant, but the stories behind them are much darker. I don lose everything to oil spill, for example, details an oil spillage in the Niger Delta region that polluted the river and devastated crops. Food staples like yam stopped growing; fish either died or vanished. The piece honors Nigeria’s Ogoni Nine activist group, included environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who were executed for opposing Shell oil’s toxic practices in the region.
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Rugiyatou Jallow at Albertz Benda
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews Rugiyatou Jallow’s paintings stop you in your tracks, forcing you to admire the different shades of brown skin that she renders on her subjects. Part of two-person presentation with Sharif Bey, Jallow’s striking pieces incorporate thread into the oil and acrylic paints, a represent being torn between two cultures. (Her father is from Gambia and her mother is from Sweden.) The artist is inspired by her matrilineal ancestry of creatives and her experiences of navigating life as a woman with multiple identities. The threads incorporated in the paintings symbolize ancestral bloodlines, connecting her subjects to their heritage. In some works on view, hands of the ancestors appear as if from the clouds, floating mid-air and reaching out to the sitters.
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Deborah Segun and Samuel Olayombo at ADA Contemporary Art Gallery
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews In all its pink glory, ADA Contemporary Art Gallery’s booth is hard to miss. Titled “The Politics of Pink,” this presentation offers exquisite paintings by Deborah Segun and Samuel Olayombo. This marriage of pink considers several possible meanings of : innocence, childhood, delicateness, beauty, femininity.
In Segun’s paintings, pink is used to accentuate her femininity as a full-figured Black woman, as a way to subvert stereotypes of Black voluptuous women as too strong-minded and overly sexualized and therefore undesirable. Segun instead presents this woman’s vulnerability. Olayombo’s works, on the other hand, raise the question of what it means to be a modern black man in his paintings of masculine cowboys in rose-colored clothing set against pink backgrounds. There’s a softness in their gaze as they look to the viewer.
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Theresa Weber at October Gallery
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews Another special project for this year’s 1-54 is by Theresa Weber. What an installation this is. Spread along the corridor of Somerset House’s West Wing, on the walls and across the ceiling, Fruits of Hope / Indigo Rhizome is made from braided blue fabric that is hung in the air, symbolizing the interconnectedness of people from the African diaspora. The use of the color blue highlights the power associations of indigo as a symbol of wealth in Europe during the height of its colonization of Africa and the Americas. Often referred to as “blue gold,” indigo was cultivated by enslaved laborers in the Caribbean for the British, who regarred it on par with other commodities like silk, coffee, and spices.
Alongside the fabric installation is a series of relief paintings of various series, titled “Haiti Revolution,” illustrating the revolutions for freedom and democracy in Haiti and later France during the 18th century. The large relief looks like a globe in which Weber creates fictional cartography in resin using acrylic paste and foam clay. Like the other relief paintings, they are decorated with beads and clips, drawing a connection to the cultural iconography of carnival in the Caribbean, which has long been a symbol of resistance within Creole cultures.
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Nicolas Coleman at PM/AM Gallery
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews Nicolas Coleman’s eye-catching paintings are poetic yet melancholic. In the series “This Ocean Brought Us Here,” Coleman delves into various aspects of travel, culture, and ideas from many centuries between Africa, the Americas, and Europe, including the history of a Black American raised in the American South who is descended from enslaved Africans brought to the US. Coleman brings the challenging relationship between West Africa and the US, established through the transatlantic slave trade, to the fore, connecting centuries and across time.
Created during a residency at Black Rock Senegal, these figurative oil paintings, featuring the artist and his family, are an allegory of sorts: views of the ocean appear as an endless entity that feels both familiar and alien.
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Silvana Mendes at Portas Vilaseca Galeria
Image Credit: Emi Eleode for ARTnews Brazilian artist Silvana Mendes’s series “Afetocolagens” (affectionate collages) investigates cultural memory and empowerment, looking into historical revisionism and the complexities of identity. The collages reconceptualize Black figures from historical media, placing them in new settings like lush scenes of nature or a peaceful valley. The artist intends to deconstruct the stereotypes and negative images invoked on Black bodies throughout Afro-Atlantic history. This includes examining Brazil’s own fraught history with its black population, especially in recognizing their contributions to the country’s culture and.
“Through her intuitive erasure of backgrounds and subtle interventions, Mendes breathes new life into archival photographs, transforming them into a body of collective memory and speculative storytelling,” a representative for Portas Vilaseca Galeria said.
