This October, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to Somerset House, London, for the 12th consecutive year. Over the past decade, the event has become an essential part of the cultural calendar, dedicated to celebrating artists from Africa and its diaspora. Each edition welcomes international exhibitors – this time, there are 60 from 23 countries – to come together to showcase an array of media: painting, sculpture, mixed-media, performance and installation. As ever, there is a strong focus on photography, with contemporary names like Alia Ali (Loft Art Gallery), Derrick Ofosu Boateng (L’Atelier 21), Djibril Dramé (Nil Gallery), Dola Posh (Cynthia Corbett Gallery), Mous Lamrabat (Loft Art Gallery), Prince Gyasi (MAĀT Gallery), Thandiwe Muriu (193 Gallery), and Zanele Muholi (Galerie Carole Kvasnevski) showing their recent series alongside trailblazing 1960s work from Oumar Ka (Axis Gallery).
One artist-to-watch is Prince Gyasi (b. 1995), a Ghanaian visual storyteller who shot his first photographs on an iPhone in order to defy art world elitism. His works stand out for their bright colour palettes and vibrant contrasts, as well as their focus on community – foregrounding, in particular, young people living in the Jamestown district of Accra. “I represent people who don’t have the platform to speak for themselves,” he explains. Gyasi considers his work as “therapy through colours”; it’s a point of view shared by many other contemporaries of his generation, including Mous Lamrabat, Thandiwe Muriu and Derrick Ofosu Boateng, whose bold lens-based works are also on display at Somerset House right now.
Elsewhere, Galerie Carole Kvasnevski presents the inimitable Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) – a visual activist, humanitarian and photographer from Umlazi, Durban. Muholi documents and archives the lives and struggles of LGBTQIA+ communities, Black South African woman-identifying workers, violence and questions of identity, all through portraits, photographs, calligraphy, installations, and, more recently, paintings and sculptures. Despite the equality promised by South Africa’s 1996 constitution, its LGBTQIA+ community remains a target for violence and prejudice. Muholi’s images form a growing archive of a group of people who are risking their lives by living authentically in the face of oppression and discrimination. Their powerful work, including the lauded self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama – translated as “Hail the Dark Lioness”, has been exhibited all over the world and published in two photobook volumes. Muholi’s solo exhibition is on view Tate Modern in London until January 2025, concurrent with 1-54.
It’s interesting to see the likes of Gyasi, Boateng and Muholi – whose works are committed to engaging with place, community and representation – in dialogue with portraitists from previous generations. Oumar Ka (1930-2020) apprenticed under the Senegalese photographer Cheikh Kane, before beginning his career in 1959 as an itinerant photographer, travelling to villages in the interior of Senegal. Ka photographed his clients within their rural contexts, often reflecting their work or occupations. “Instead of abstracting his sitters, Ka offers a materialism that insists on their daily lives, locales and labour, not as ethnographic curiosities, but as constituents of their modernity,” writes author Giulia Paoletti of his work, which is now held in the collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This is just a small slice of what is on offer at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. Beyond photography, the programme is vast, and encompasses and array of Special Projects running alongside the 160 exhibiting galleries. There’s a spotlight on Ghanaian, Moroccan and Brazilian talent, as well as stand-out installations like British-Nigerian artist Slawn’s graffitied double-decker buses and Sophia Kacimi’s giant Zoubida chess board. Notably, Somerset House presents the public exhibition Making a rukus!, Black Queer Histories through Love and Resistance, which delves into the vibrant world of rukus! Federation, an art project and living archive celebrating Black LGBTQIA+ cultures and histories. It’s an event not to be missed.
1-54: Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, London | 10-13 October
Image Credits:
1. Prince Gyasi, Keyed Perspective, 2024, 80 x 120 cm. Edition of 5+2 A.P – 2 formats. Courtesy of the Artist and MAĀT Gallery.
2. Zanele Muholi, Khayalami, 2023, Baryta print, variable dimensions. Edition of 8 + 2 Aps. Courtesy of Galerie Carole Kvasnevski
3. Oumar Ka, Untitled (Two Women with Thatched Roof House), 1959-68, Gelatin Silver Print, 43.2 x 43.2 cm. 7 + 3 Artist’s proof. Courtesy of Axis Gallery & the Oumar Ka Estate.