At 1-54 London, African Modernism Gets a Dedicated Section
It is the 14th edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, which runs at Somerset House from 15 to 18 October, and this year its modernist spotlight features familiar names: Gerard Sekoto, Skunder Boghossian, Papa Ibra Tall and Ibrahim El-Salahi, among others. This is not the first time 1-54 has featured modernist African artists, but […]
The Masters Africa Can Still Afford
Ayo Adeyinka left finance to deal in modern African art. As his gallery takes Lamidi Fakeye to Frieze Masters, he makes a case for buying the continent’s masters while they remain within reach, and giving their work a life beyond private collections.
Yemi Alade, In Her Own Name
It is a blazing noon in the second week of March 2026 when the Grammy-nominated artist Yemi Alade presses record on a “Get Ready With Me” video. She begins with a meditative hook, her eyes closed, her hands pressed together solemnly. In the same measured succession, she works moisturising cream into her face before turning […]
Architecture as an Atlas of Resonance
It begins in memory: the filtered light of a courtyard, the coolness of a shaded passage, the threshold between public and private. It begins, too, in the physical intelligence of making: the hand drawing a line, shaping a model, testing a material, and turning an intuition into something tangible. Born in Fez, Morocco, the French-Moroccan […]
Akin Faminu on Style, Taste and the Things He Returns To
Akin Faminu can spend one evening watching a 1999 Dolce & Gabbana show and another reading an anatomy textbook from cover to cover. The medical doctor and fashion creator has built a public life around style, but his tastes extend well beyond clothes. For this edition of Word of Mouth, Faminu talks about the designers […]
The Game Is Already There
This conversation was recorded in mid-June, as the group stage of the World Cup was opening. Anita Asante remembers the game before it became a career. She was eleven or twelve, back in Ghana on a family visit, playing barefoot with her cousins on whatever ground was nearest, a patch of grass, a stretch of […]
Meriem Berrada Took Morocco to Venice for the First Time
For about a decade and a half, Meriem Berrada has been at the forefront of building sustainable art and cultural ecosystems across Africa and the Arab world and their diasporas, with a focus on the intersections between art and craft in contemporary storytelling, as well as an interest in photography. She has founded, launched, and […]
Joanna Masiyiwa Has Only Photographs. Amayi Is the Rest.
Fashion became how she moved through spaces where she was already visibly different, though
Nyambo Masa Mara on Border Politics, Sustainability, and Building Masa Mara
Nyambo Masa Mara on Border Politics, Sustainability, and Building Masa Mara Portrait of Nyambo Masa Mara, Founder of the brand Masa Mara. Nyambo Masa Mara’s two freeform dreadlocks hang down his back, thick and heavy. He estimates they weigh about 15 kilograms total. “People always ask if they’re heavy,” he says. “Of course they are. […]
HERitage: Celebrating African Female Changemakers
In conversation with Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye founder and CEO of Ami Colé, now Executive Vice President of Skims’ beauty and fragrance business.