Over the past decade, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair has evolved from a niche satellite event into a mainstay of the international art circuit. This year marked its tenth anniversary in New York, as the fair returned with its most ambitious edition yet, opening from May 8 – 11 at the Halo on 28 Liberty Street and bringing together 30 galleries from 17 countries across five continents. With 15 first-time participants and 18 galleries debuting in the New York edition, including DRC’s KubArt Gallery— the fair signaled a growing appetite for diverse voices and deeper engagement with African and diasporic narratives.
This year’s edition marked a tonal shift: less spectacle, more substance. From large-scale installations to archival interventions, 1-54 spotlighted artists reshaping how African histories—and futures—are imagined, documented, and displayed. Below, we highlight just a few of the standout presentations.
Thandiwe Muriu for 193 gallery
Thandiwe Muriu stands out as a trailblazer in Kenya’s male-dominated commercial photography scene. Her lived experience navigating questions around womanhood, tradition, and identity informs her acclaimed Camo series—a striking body of work where models are visually blended into vibrant African textiles using entirely analog methods.
At 2025 New York’s 1-54, Muriu presented A Constellation of Power (2025) a visual ode to collective feminine strength. Inspired by the African proverb—Wood already touched by fire is not hard to set alight, reflects how women, when united, form a force greater than the sum of their parts. Through vibrant pattern, color, and form, Muriu reframes female empowerment in quiet brilliance that together becomes unstoppable.
Girma Berta for Nil Gallery Paris
Girma Berta, Ethiopian self-taught photographer has emerged as one of the most distinctive visual storytellers of contemporary African life. With a background in painting and graphic design, Berta’s photographic work blends the vibrancy of street realism with painterly composition—creating images that are both arresting and emotionally resonant. He first gained international acclaim with his Moving Shadows series, which earned him the 2016 Getty Images Instagram Grant.
At the 1-54 New York 2025 edition, Berta debuted works from his latest series Motion, including Streets of Turmi, Ethiopia and Streets of Marrakech, Morocco. This new body of work continues his exploration of Africa’s urban energy capturing cities like Addis Ababa, Bamako, and Jinja with a signature visual spin that distills movement into stillness.
Figures of Miracle by Joël Andrianomearisoa
Born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Joël Andrianomearisoa is known for his poetic, multidisciplinary practice that moves fluidly between installation, textile, architecture, and performance. His work often explores intangible emotions: longing, nostalgia, and the layered echoes of memory—through tactile and material-based language.
At 1-54 New York 2025, Andrianomearisoa presented Figures of Miracle, an installation shaped from raffia and embodying both precision and emotion, suggesting a raised fist, a caress, or the quiet choreography of weaving itself.
Hyacinthe Ouattara for 193 Gallery
The work of visual artist Hyacinthe Ouattara cut across sculpture, painting, installation, and performance, embracing a multidisciplinary language grounded in material exploration. Texture, color, and spontaneity are central to his practice, with painting marked by expressive, gestural movement and installations often teetering on the edge of physical and conceptual balance. His growing international profile includes presentations at the Havana Biennale (2024), the Dakar Biennale (2022), and the International Sculpture Biennale of Ouagadougou.
At New York’s 1-54 , Ouattara joined the 193 Gallery group exhibition titled Constellation organique where he exhibited textile-based sculptures composed of knotted threads and reclaimed fabrics. These forms, inspired by the organic and bodily, evoke themes of memory, identity, and the delicate line between presence and absence.
Shikeith for Yossi Milo
Philadelphia-born Shikeith is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, sculpture, video, and performance. Deeply rooted in the emotional and spiritual dimensions of black queer life, his work explores the psychological landscapes shaped by systemic oppression, masculinity, and cultural memory. Drawing from African diasporic spiritual traditions and the concept of hauntology, Shikeith’s art creates space for healing and speculative futures.
At the 2025 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York, Shikeith presented O’ my body, make of me always a man who questions!, a haunting, richly textured work from his Blue Shadow series. The piece confronts masculinity through an intimate lens, as with much of his work.
Sanlé Sory for Yossi Milo
Burkinabe Sanlé Sory is a pioneering photographer whose images have come to define the cultural spirit of West Africa in the post-independence era. In 1965, five years after Burkina Faso gained independence from France, Sory opened Volta Photo Studio, where he began documenting the emerging style of a new generation. Often described as a “witness to everything,” Sory’s work reflects collective transformation. His photographs affirmed people’s resilience and joy during a pivotal chapter in African history.
At 1-54 New York 2025, Sory exhibited a striking black-and-white portrait of a young woman in a patterned top and headwrap—an image of youthful celebration, fashion, and self-expression in the 1960s and 70s.
Prisca Munkeni Monnier for KubArt Gallery – (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Prisca Munkeni Monnier, also known as Lafurie, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work navigates the layered terrains of memory, identity, and postcolonial displacement. Working primarily in photography and video, Monnier explores the fragile dialogue between past and present, capturing the traces of lived experience that risk disappearing into silence. Her images are quiet but emotionally charged—imbued with the tension between presence and erasure. Whether documenting rituals or personal relics, her work is a poetic resistance to the erasure of cultural memory.
At 1-54 New York 2025, Monnier presented Guide Suprême and Rituel Ma Ndona (both 2023)—video-based works that meditate on spiritual lineage and ancestral ritual. These pieces act as visual elegies, honoring the unseen forces and forgotten stories that shape diasporic existence. Through them, Monnier not only archives the ephemeral but gives it new life, transforming the intimate into the universal.
Textile Language by Art Comes First
Art Comes First (ACF) is a global design collective committed to honoring and evolving African craftsmanship through the lens of contemporary fashion. Known for their cross-cultural collaborations and politically engaged aesthetics, ACF approaches clothing as storytelling.
At 1-54 New York 2025, ACF presented Textile Language, a two-room immersive installation rooted in the theme of black cotton. This special project traced the journey of African textile heritage—from the ancient cotton fields of Meroë and the indigo-dyed traditions of Mali’s Tellem caves to a black-owned cotton farm in Alabama, established in 1877. These references served as historical anchors.
Sipho Nuse for Jonathan Carver Moore
Sipho Nuse is a multidisciplinary artist based in South Africa, whose practice is grounded in photography—particularly self-portraiture—as a means of personal and political expression. As a queer black man raised in a conservative society, Nuse’s work confronts the pain, tension, and healing that arise from navigating identity under the weight of societal expectations. Through introspection and visual storytelling, he transforms his body into a site of truth, vulnerability, and resistance.
At 1-54 New York 2025, Nuse exhibited Izibele I, Qamata I, and Ncese II (all 2023)—a powerful series of self-portraits that explore themes of repression, spirituality, and reclamation. His photographs are intimate and confrontational, blending traditional Xhosa motifs with contemporary queer narratives to reclaim both cultural and personal space.
Abongile Sidzumo for Kalashnikov Gallery x David Krut Projects (South Africa/USA)
Abongile Sidzumo is a Cape Town-based visual artist whose practice reimagines the material and cultural significance of leather. A graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Sidzumo works primarily with repurposed leather offcuts—materials rich in symbolic meaning and steeped in histories of labor, ritual, and sacrifice. Rooted in personal memory and collective experience, his work reflects on the everyday lives of marginalized communities while probing deeper themes of coexistence, ancestry, and spiritual repair.
At 1-54 New York 2025, Sidzumo exhibited Gqirhana (2025) and Kumhlaba wokhokho bethu (The Land of Our Forefathers) (2024). These textured, stitched leather works serve as meditative landscapes—honoring the cultural legacy of cattle within rural South African life while drawing a parallel to the traumas endured by black communities during and after apartheid
