Art Travelling in Africa: the 1-54 Art Fair

No, I haven’t been in Africa – not recently anyway. I’d say unfortunately, but if I had been there I’d have missed the terrific 1-54 Art Fair. It’s my first visit to the fair. The first -and- still only – international fair devoted to modern and contemporary African art was established in 2013 by Touria El Glaoui and is known as 1-54, after the 54 countries of the African continent. While not all were representing, it is an expansive and diverse show of very high-quality art that shows the range and breadth of the continent’s art. It shows both African artists and those from the diaspora, with African and European galleries participating.

To give you an idea of the spread of African art in the fair, I saw Le LAB from Cairo, Gallery 1957 (Accra, Ghana), Verve Gallery (São Paulo, Brazil), Amasaka Gallery (Masaka, Uganda), Osart Gallery (Milan, Italy), The Art Pantheon Gallery (Lagos, Nigeria), Cynthia Corbett Gallery (London, UK), Galerie Voss (Düsseldorf, Germany), House of Beau Gallery (Rabat, Morocco), Galerie REVEL (Bordeaux, France), and Pearl Lam Galleries (Hong Kong, China), and more.

I was already familiar with Egypt’s Le LAB, although I had never visited it. Le LAB was founded about 3 years ago by Rasheed Kamel in Cairo to showcase and expand the Egyptian art and design scene, Kamel’s vision is to explore the possibilities for collectible design blurring the boundaries between art, design and architecture..

Le LAB showed four artists: Khaled Zaki, Khaled Hafez, Omar Chakil and the photographer M_Fares. I know Khaled Hafez’s work, which I curated in the exhibition Alchemy! two years ago. Delicate collages made with found paper referencing mythic imagery with the aesthetic of the quiet every day. Beautiful.

Khaled Hafez, detail from his ongoing project ‘the illustrated history of the mundane’

I also loved Omar Chakil’s sumptuous alabaster sculptures. Recently, I saw the prized Egyptian alabaster sarcophagus at the Soane Museum and was once again astonished at how glorious that medium is; Chakil does it justice. Alabaster is calcite, a soft mineral rock extensively found in Egypt, where it has long been carved into intricate sculptures and lamps. It comes in different colours and can be breathtaking. Chakil’s huge lamp sculptures are deeply covetable.

As for the rest, there was so much astoundingly good art I was saturated by the end, and did not bother with Frieze this year.

What did I like about the work I saw? Its breadth and diversity. Its expanse. The sheer skill and talent I saw there. The lack of jokey, ironic, postmodern nonsense. The power of the artists’ engagement with culture and—at times—politics.

Very strong statements at times – powerful.

Above all, though – the sheer beauty. Do not underestimate beauty in art. Never underestimate it. In the art works presented in the fair here, the sublime and the beautiful are all on display. It is possible to lose yourself in this work. As a disciple of Kandinsky, I am moved by colour and the terrific thing is the way these artists use colour, from the delicate earth tones of Hafez and Chakil’s use of alabaster natural light-holding properties, to the deeply saturated paintings of Abe Odedina, The Nigerian-born Brazilian-based (and London) artist’s work is immensely powerful. ‘A self-described folk artist, he acknowledges diverse influences – from Haitian Vodou practitioners to Painters of the Sacred Heart to African studio photography. He explores ideas, “the triumphs and tragedies of daily life.”’ (see more)

Of course a term like ‘African Art’ is impossible to really grasp. The huge continent, with so many different traditions and an even more disparate and diverse diaspora. But what else to call it? The challenge is to showcase each artist as an individual while keeping the overall sense of a coherent reason why we are exploring them all at the same time. It’s awkward – but exhilarating.

I encourage you to look at the art fair’s website to see more. And here is a selection of some of my favourite pieces – there are too many to put here so look for yourself! I will be visiting the fair next year and in the meantime, getting to as many of these galleries as I can.