In New York, an African Art Fair Returns for Its 10th Year

In her previous works, the photographer Hazel Mphande would focus the camera on herself to shoot discomforting black-and-white self-portraits. But after a recent trip to the Karoo, a semi-arid region in South Africa’s Western Cape where she took photographs of the desolate terrain, Mphande pondered if those works could be likenesses as well.

“When I got back home, I was like, ‘Could a landscape possibly also be self-portraiture?’ and I started to take that idea and break it down, because I identify with the land that I come from,” Mphande, 35, said in a video interview from Johannesburg, where she lives and works. “I’m always confronted with my identity: where I come from, how I grew up and also the psychological impact that a place can have on you.”

Berman Contemporary, which represents Mphande, will show these topographical “self-portraits” from May 9-11 at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York, along with self-portraits by a fellow South African artist, Athenkosi Kwinana.

This concept of place playing a significant role in revealing and influencing experiences is something that resonates with Touria El Glaoui, the founder of 1-54, who named the fair after the 54 countries on the African continent. With three fairs held annually in New York, Marrakech and London, these diverse locales shape the feel of each event.

It is a sentiment echoed by Christa Clarke, the director of curatorial strategy for the Museum Project at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass. “London seems to me kind of this steady ship, the home base, and it’s such an important center for Africa’s global diaspora, while Marrakesh has its own kind of specialness,” she said in a video interview. “New York is interesting because it’s hopped around, it’s been in these different geographies, which have given it a different flair.”

1-54 will celebrate its 10th anniversary in New York, and there will be many new things enthusiasts of African and African diaspora contemporary art can look forward to.

First, after years in Brooklyn, Harlem and Chelsea, the fair this year will be at Halo in Manhattan’s Financial District. There will be 30 galleries — 15 of which are new to the fair — from 17 countries, including Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Japan. There will also be several special projects including installations from Ghana’s Yaw Owusu and Madagascar’s Joël Andrianomearisoa, as well as a group show of 11 Caribbean artists curated by the collaborative platform Atlantic Arthouse.

“New York is the most urban one that we have in terms of venues and neighborhood,” said El Glaoui in a video interview, “and the fact that we’re in Manhattan really gives you that vibe.”

Back in 2010, when El Glaoui first had the idea to do a fair focused on art from Africa and the African diaspora, it was the lack of conversations around its contemporary art scene that spoke volumes to her. But by the time the first fair took place in London in 2013, institutions like Tate in London had begun to seriously investigate artists and galleries from across the continent.

As the fair grew in popularity, and El Glaoui added editions in New York in 2015 and Marrakech in 2018, the uniqueness of each location played into who was exhibiting and who attended which editions. In the Marrakech edition, for example, language and culture play a part in drawing more collectors from the Middle East and galleries from West Africa, El Glaoui said. New York, she said, made 1-54 more international.

“What is very different in New York is we are tapping into an African American collector base who have all this buying power but are also specifically interested in buying Black artists,” El Glaoui said. “I don’t know any galleries who have the means to be a part of the international conversation that are not trying to be in New York or show their work in New York. It is important positioning for us and for artists from Africa and the African diaspora.”

Breaking into the New York art world was a challenge at first, but over the years, as the fair moved around the city, it also found a niche that collectors and institutions found compelling. Kevin D. Dumouchelle, curator of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, said 1-54 New York has become an “expected part of the environment” that happens around Frieze week (May 7-11).

“It’s an exciting opportunity to bring artists and galleries who don’t have a foothold otherwise in the New York market specifically and in the North American market in general,” Dumouchelle said, adding that the fair is an event that many collectors and art world professionals look forward to each year. “And for me as a curator, I always find artists who were not on my radar previously.”

For galleries like Larkin Durey in London (formerly Jack Bell Gallery), which participated in the first New York fair 10 years ago, being back after a few years’ hiatus from the fair is a thrill.

“It’s really important to us,” said Oliver Durey, the gallery’s director, adding that the first fair in New York in 2015 had been pivotal for the gallery. “There are not so many Americans in London at the moment, so we are keen to see those clients and museum collectors face to face and get those conversations rolling.”

The New York collector Elizabeth Kahane said that even though she had visited 1-54 in both London and Marrakech — where this year she purchased a work by the Moroccan photographer Sara Benabdallah — the New York fair was unique because she got to explore things in the city she had never seen before.

“Touria has a set location in other places, but in New York it’s a kind of movable feast,” said Kahane, a lifelong New Yorker. “Like when she had it in a church in Harlem, many of us had never been to that space, so she puts a lot of effort in every year. Sometimes it’s logistics because she cannot get the same space; sometimes it’s because she wants to try something different.”

Different this year will be a focus on the African diaspora in places like Brazil and the Caribbean. Tern Gallery from Nassau, the Bahamas, is participating in the fair for the first time, bringing works from the Jamaican painter Leasho Johnson and the Bahamian ceramicist Anina Major.

“It’s wonderful they include the diaspora within that conversation,” Amanda Coulson, the gallery’s co-founder, wrote in an email, “as there are so many connection points and cross-pollinations which you can clearly see in the work through use of color, different tradition and folklore.” She added that the region’s diversity comes from a mix of Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and European cultures as well.

Dumouchelle agreed. “Africa has always been part of the global network of trade, exchange, ideas, peoples and art forms,” he said. “So it’s sort of a natural evolution of the fair and the market to wake up and to feel less circumscribed by the specifics of geography.”

For Mphande, having her photographs shown in New York again — her gallery has brought her earlier oeuvre twice before — is a thrill. “I love New York,” she said, “so to have my work there is a privilege, and I feel like my year is already done.”