Q&A with Touria El Glaoui, the founding director of 1-54
Madara Enzele
arts and business development manager
As 1-54 is the first international art fair dedicated solely to contemporary African art, please give us a glimpse into the founding story and your experience within the first years of the fair.
I founded 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair back in 2013. Before starting the fair, I was working in London in sales and my role focused on the African continent. During my travels in Africa, I had the chance to experience some of the incredible contemporary artwork from artists in these countries and realized that many of these artists didn’t have the platform or infrastructure to showcase their artwork on a global scale.
This is what led me to found 1-54, so African artists and artists across the African diaspora had a dedicated space to showcase their work and engage in creative exchange across the globe.
The fair has expanded to annual editions not only in the first location London, but also New York, Marrakech and a pop-up fair in Paris - why these locations? Are you thinking of also expanding deeper into the continent of Africa and one of its 54 countries?
Our selection of where we host the fairs each year are reflective of major cities with a robust arts and culture community that we feel would deeply appreciate contemporary African art. 1-54’s goal is to showcase African diasporic art outside of the continent of Africa, and we are always looking to expand. Most recently, we debuted our first presentation in Asia for our 1-54 Presents series in collaboration with Christie’s at their offices in Hong Kong in March of this year, in tandem with Art Basel. This was a huge milestone for us in presenting African artists to new audiences.
Please share about the selection process and the geographics of your exhibitors. What are the most crucial aspects your team considers upon selection?
For our selection process for the fair, it’s very important that we choose galleries representing artists from all across the world who are part of the African diaspora.
We are always looking to showcase galleries and artists at each edition of our fair who may not typically have the opportunity to display their work in that particular city, or who have not received international recognition in the past.
Our fair is meant to be a destination for visitors to view a broad range of works reflective of the continent.
What practices and initiatives has 1-54 started to support the local art market of Africa?
In addition to uplifting and supporting artists and galleries from the African Diaspora, we also partner with organizations working to support Africa’s local art market. For this year’s New York Edition, we are partnering with Black Rock Global Arts Foundation as part of our Special Projects Program. A portion of proceeds go directly towards benefiting Black Rock’s mission to support artists and expand global discourse about what Africa means today.
How has the fair influenced the recognition and popularity of contemporary African art since its inception? What is the change you recognize?
Prior to the launch of 1-54, many people did not associate contemporary art with African art. This visibility is so important and we have been working to disrupt stereotypes about African art around the globe.
Are you worried that the current trends of programming artists from marginalized groups might be leaning towards Black tokenism, not genuine inclusion? What are the practices you want to encourage to avoid this?
The history of Black tokenism in primarily white art institutions is why I feel so strongly that spaces dedicated to Black and Diasporic artists like 1-54 are crucial.
Ensuring that marginalized artists have the infrastructure they need to share their artwork and their stories helps to avoid posturing at the expense of Black artists and ensure their message is being spread authentically.
We are having this conversation right before the New York edition of 1-54. Is there anything in particular you would like to highlight from the programme?
We are very excited about this year’s programming, as we will be exhibiting over 30 galleries and 70 artists, making this our largest New York Fair to date. Our fair make its debut this year at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea, just a short walk from many of the other major art fairs going on this week. For this edition, I’m particularly excited to showcase a large number of solo shows, which offer an excellent opportunity to delve into the practice of specific artists. We have Christa David presented by 193 Gallery, Ekene Emeka-Maduka presented by FABIENNE LEVY, Clay Apenouvon presented by 110 Veronique Rieffel Gallery, Oroma Elewa presented by In Situ - Fabienne Leclerc, Aïcha Snoussi presented by La La Lande Gallery, Jared McGriff presented by Spinello Projects, JC Bright presented by The Bridge Gallery, and Ibrahim El-Salahi presented by Vigo Gallery.
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