Review: 1-54 Art Fair London 2023

Great news for the African art fair 1-54 (so-called because there are 54 countries in Africa today), as it was recently announced that following its success in London, New York and Morocco, the fair will debut in Hong Kong next year! It’s an exciting time, with artists from diverse countries and cultures gaining traction through platforms in the prestigious mainstream. 1-54 has played a key part in this since its London launch in 2013.

This year’s London edition proved its worth. To mark its 11th year, we selected 11 of our favourite pieces from the fair.

Amine El Gotaibi: “Illuminate the Light”

Specially commissioned for the Somerset House courtyard, Moroccan artist Amine El Gotaibi presented his most ambitious work to date, “Illuminate the Light.” On the rainy day we attended, visitors were able to take shelter in one of the installation’s twelve geometric sculptures, inspired by the seeds of a pomegranate – in varying shapes and colours to represent the diversity and abundance of the African continent. At dusk, the sculptures transformed into luminous installations, highlighting the artist’s philosophy that “out of darkness, light emerges.”

Amine El Gotaibi: ‘Illuminate the Light’. 2023. Somerset House courtyard. October 2023.Photo by MTotoe.

The Evil Genius

Nigerian recording artist Mr Eazi commissioned 16 unique pieces, each corresponding to a track from his forthcoming album of the same name. As he crossed the continent recording the album, Mr Eazi forged relationships with artists he encountered along the way. Noticing a lack of alignment between Africa’s exploding music industry and the continent’s fine arts creators, he realized he could enhance the album’s story, as well as bring fresh attention to African art, by incorporating their work into the project. The featured artists represent eight African nations, and each brings their own unique perspective.

Theresah Ankomah: Yɛ yɛ dɔm, 2023

Within the rotunda of Somerset House’s Nelson Staircase, Ankomah delved into the profound meanings embedded within everyday objects, through performative installations, sculpture, weaving, photography, basketry painting, and printmaking. Pushing the boundaries of art by exploring the intricacies of weaving and craft in relation to issues of geopolitics, consumerism, gender, identity, and capitalism, the work creates a rich tapestry of stories and experiences.

Theresah Ankomah, A Walk Through Intimacy, 2021, Site Responsive Installation. Courtesy of The African Art Hub (TAAH).

Mbaye Babacar Diouf (50 Golborne)

Mbaye Babacar Diouf’s Vase Sacre works are absolutely stunning. Made in bronze, engraved with pattern-like symbols and loose marks like scriptures, parts of the sculptures are transpierced with nails. The surface of the objects in parts seems weathered, in othered it is rendered a glossy gold, making them appear like awe-inspiring archeological-like artefacts.

Louis Barthélémy (UBUNTU Art Gallery)

We love a bit of textile work, and Louis Barthélémy’s appliques caught the eye with their bright colour and graphic style – capturing the energy and vivacity of contemporary Egypt while paying homage to its storied past.

Louis Barthélémy, Hockney’s Egyptian Vision, 2023. Tapestry, 206 x 147cm

M'barek Bouhchichi (L’Atelier 21)

M'barek Bouhchichi’s striking paintings present a series of Black figures, in solitary portraits and set against backdrops that are both full and empty – great swathes of bold colour, such as green or yellow. The works give shape to modes of expression that move from the individual discourse towards broader social, poetic and historic systems, by looking at the body in space, identity, corporeality, belonging, difference and otherness.

M’barek Bouhchichi, Intimité I, Mixed media on rubber, 98 x 96 cm, 2023. Courtesy of L’Atelier 21 art gallery, Casablanca, Morocco.

Roméo Mivekannin (Galerie Eric Dupont)

Another painter to strike us at 1-54 was Roméo Mivekannin, who inserts himself into the theatrical, sumptuous scenes of classical European painting. The viewer is invited to replay history in its own way, to reappropriate the representations of which it may have been the object. The artist invites himself where he is not expected in the composition, plastically through his own self-portrait, to step away from the place that has been assigned to him.

Roméo Mivekannin, Série Les Modèles de l'histoire de l'art - La Gorgone d'après Caravage, 2023. Acrylic and elixir bath on canvas, 128 x 124cm.

April Kamunde (Afriart Gallery)

Kamunde’s luscious paintings explore meanings of rest and the pursuit of it, from a personal and feminist angle. Paintings like Sometimes this is how we therapy draw you right into an intimate moment, a conversation, which makes sense when you learn that the work is driven by personal reflection. The works respond to feelings of weariness triggered by her recent experiences of the pandemic, a rapidly changing world and the endeavor to live a fulfilling life in fast-paced Nairobi, one of Africa’s mega cities, where she was born and raised.

April Kamunde, Sometimes This Is How We Therapy 3, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 80x116cm, Courtesy of Afriart Gallery

Slimen Elkamel (Nil Gallery)

Slimen El Kamel’s imagined rural scenes hark back to his childhood in Tunisia, where, nourished by popular stories, his imagination was shaped by the tradition of storytelling and popular poetry. The flattened landscapes are intricately detailed and almost narrative, and in the pictorial field, images of memory, reality and imagination seem to cross over one another without end.

Slimen El Kamel , Une nature en nous, 2023. 150 x 200cm

Ozioma Onuzulike (AFIKARIS)

The Nigerian artist explores the aesthetic, symbolic and metaphorical nature of clay and the clay-working processes – pounding, crushing, hammering, wedging, grinding, cutting, pinching, punching, perforating, burning, firing – in his making of the multiple units that characterise his mixed-media projects. His stunning pieces are made up of hundreds of small handmade pieces, here made with earthenware, stoneware combined with recycled glass and ash glaze, connected by aluminium wire.

Ozioma Onuzulike, BEADED BLOUSE WITH TWO FRONT POCKETS FOR AUGUST MEETING II, 2023. Natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, ash glazes, recycled glasses and copper wire. 32 7/10 × 26 × 2 2/5in / 83 × 66 × 6cm.

Isabelle D (Gallery Nosco)

Isabelle.D’s intricately detailed, three-dimensional textiles can be interpreted as a new form of feminist practice, linking together traditional means of production such as sewing, knitting and crocheting with timeless as well as autobiographical subject matters exploring contemporary feminism and the translation of ‘Trauma into Beauty.’ The recent works on show at 1-54 appear like coral, but are in fact abstract landscapes that explore the bruises caused by colonization.

Isabelle .D, Mensonges et Vérités - 06 , 2023. Handwoven and crocheted natural fibers on canvas, 80 x 120 x 10cm

Date: 12-15 October 2023.Website: 1-54.com. Instagram: @154artfair

Words by Tani Burns