1-54 Forum

1-54 Lockdown WebinarThe Future of Contemporary African Art FairsMay 22, 20201-54 invited art fairs Founders and Directors Tokini Peterside (ART X Lagos), Victoria Mann (AKAA), Mandla Sibeko (FNB Art Joburg) to a discussion on the future of contemporary African art fairs with 1-54 Founding Director Touria El Glaoui.www.1-54.com

1-54 Lockdown WebinarHow are contemporary African art galleries envisioning the post COVID-19 art world?May 28, 20201-54 invited Rakeb Sile, Founder and Director, Addis Fine Art (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and London, UK), Cécile Fakhoury, Founder and Director, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire and Dakar, Senegal) and Ayo Adeyinka, Founder and Director, TAFETA (London, UK) to discuss how their galleries, located in diverse parts of the world, can and will adapt to a redefined art world. They will be in discussion with Touria El Glaoui, Founding Director, 1-54.

1-54 Webinar Access all Areas: How to challenge institutions to break their exclusive structures?17 June, 2020The current eruptions around the globe instigated by century-long structural racism and ignorance has caused many cultural institutions to publicly acknowledge their blanks and faults. While this can be deemed as a first step towards change, the big question remains: how will this lead to in-depth, long-term transformations?1-54 has invited Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba (Co-Founders and Editors-in-Chief of Contemporary And) to curate and moderate a conversation between Sepake Angiama (Artistic Director Iniva, London), Linett Kamala (Artist, Educator and Director for Lin Kam Art), and Touria El Glaoui (Founding Director, 1-54) discussing possibilities and tools for a diversification of the art world.

1-54 WebinarWhat role can art centres in Africa play in navigating a rapidly shifting world?1 July, 20201-54 invited Teesa Bahana, Director, 32° East Ugandan Arts Trust (Kampala, Uganda), Mirna Wessels, CEO, Spier Arts Trust (Cape Town, South Africa) and Ibrahim Mahama, Founder, The Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (Tamale, Ghana) to discuss what role their art centres, located in diverse parts of Africa, can play in a local and international context. They were in discussion with Rebecca Anne Proctor, former Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Bazaar Art and Harper’s Bazaar Interiors.www.1-54.com

1-54 WebinarReinventing African Art Museums for Changing Times8 July, 20201-54 invited Sonia Lawson, Founding Director, Palais de Lomé (Lomé, Togo); Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Cape Town, South Africa) and Dr. Karen E. Melbourne, Senior Curator, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC, USA). They were in discussion with Claude Grunitzky, Founder of TRUE Africa.www.1-54.com

1-54 Webinar The Future of Art Collecting15 July, 20201-54 invited collectors Sandra Mbanefo Obiago (Nigeria), Pulane Kingston (South Africa) and Kenneth Montague (Canada), for a conversation focusing on the future of art collecting. The webinar will be moderated by Chela Mitchell, art advisor and founder of Komuna.www.1-54.com

1-54 WebinarAfrican biennales as portals for collaborative practices22 July, 20201-54 invited Christine Eyene, Artistic Director, Biennale Internationale de Casablanca, Sammy Baloji, Co-Founder, Biennale de Lubumbashi and Daudi Karungi, Director & Coordinator, Kampala Art Biennale to discuss African biennales and collaborative practices. Conversation moderated by Nkgopoleng Moloi, South African writer, curator and photographer.www.1-54.com

1-54 x Christie's | Collect, Curate, Connect: Insights into Contemporary African Art6 October 2020With 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair's London edition and 1-54 Online, Powered by Christie's, Christie's is hosted a panel with leading experts working within contemporary African art scenes to open its 1-54 pop-up exhibition at the Duke Street Gallery. Join Isabel Millar (Junior Specialist and curator of the 1-54 pop-up exhibition) as she speaks with Pulane Kingston (Collector and member of the Africa Acquisitions Committee at the Tate Modern), Ayo Adeyinka (Director of TAFETA gallery) and Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba (Curators and Founding Editors of Contemporary &), to discuss Africa's dynamic art scenes and how to meaningfully engage with and collect contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.www.1-54.com

1-54 Webinar | Artists to Watch: Anya Paintsil and DuduBloom More18 October 2020Join Touria El Glaoui as she speaks with two artists, Anya Paintsil (Ed Cross Fine Art) and DuduBloom More (Berman Contemporary), to discuss their sold-out solo booths at 1-54 London 2020 and their practices in textiles.www.1-54.com

1-54 Webinar | Creating public installations across Africa and its diaspora 2 December 2020 Imagining, designing and filling public spaces gives creatives unique challenges and opportunities, from collaboration and production to establishing a work’s post-artist existence. What is the position of public installations in Africa and across its diaspora, and where is it going next? Join Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell (Co-Founder, doual'art), Zak Ové (Artist), David Ogunmuyiwa (Founder, Architecture Doing Place) in discussion with Dr. George Tebogo Mahashe (Researcher). www.1-54.com

1-54 Webinar | Performance Art in the time of Protest and Pandemic 3 March 2021A conversation with artists Jelili Atiku, Shelia Chukwulozie and Adelaide Damoah led by Lisa Anderson, independent curator and founder of Black British Art. 2020 bore witness to a global pandemic and widespread protests against police brutality and racism. Within this context how have performance practices and processes changed? When an audience is being restricted from gathering but also driven to gather to fight against issues of systemic racism, how can, and has, performance been a part of these conversations? Where are performance practices going next? www.1-54.com

1-54 VIP Webinar | Secondary market for contemporary African Art 2020/20217 October 2021Drawing from Corrigall & Co’s latest report, Mary Corrigall will discuss the status of the secondary market for contemporary African art. The findings are based on an analysis of figures from sales that have taken place from January 2020 to June 2021.  As the focus is on gauging the temperature of the African art market only auctions dedicated to the sale of African art were under the microscope. These auctions were conducted in Africa and Europe by the following auction houses; Sotheby's (London), Bonhams (London, New York), Artcurial (Paris, Marrakesh, Piasa (Paris), Strauss & Co (Cape Town, Joburg), Aspire Art Auctions (Cape Town, Joburg), Compagnie Marocaine des Oeuvres et Objets d'Art (Casablanca) and Arthouse (Lagos). Over 9000 lots were analysed.Corrigall will introduce some of the important findings that relate to the contemporary works. Under discussion will be which countries in the African art ecosystem claim the market share for the sale of contemporary works at auction, as well as how the value and what is valued differs in markets in Africa and Europe. A few case studies will be included. For more information on the Contemporary African Art Auctions 2020/2021 visit: https://www.corrigall.org/contemporaryartauctions2020 Corrigall & Co is a Cape Town-based art research consultancy with a focus on mapping art ecosystems in contemporary art from the African continent. It was established in 2016 by Mary Corrigall, an award-winning art journalist and academic. Our research is channelled into bespoke art reports, presentations, workshops and consultations with collectors and art organisations. Previous reports include; South African Art Market: Pricing & Patterns, African Art Auctions, Europe, October 2020, Contemporary African Art Ecology: A Decade of Curating, Top 50 Artists & the Top 20 Curators who validated them and Joburg Art Fairs.www.1-54.com

1-54 Forum Paris7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022)Opening Remarks / A Memento to Marrakech (11:00 am – 11:15 am CET)Forum Curator Dr Omar Kholeif introduces 1-54 Forum Paris.Enter the Frame with Hassan Hajjaj (Video Address and Conversation, 11:15 am – 11:45 am CET)1-54 Forum begins by reflecting on the complex cultural constellations of Marrakech, Morocco, a site where the 1-54 Forum and Fair has for the second time been moved due to the evolving contours of the Covid-19 pandemic. Audiences are invited to Enter the Frame of the Day in a special trans-border conversation with the polymath, Hassan Hajjaj. An Andy Warhol for the 21st Century, artist Hajjaj demystifies Morocco’s cliches, immersing us into the heart of the city’s Medina and revealing new work in progress in a conversation with Forum Curator, Dr Kholeif.https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022)Painting a New Expressionism: A Keynote conversation between artist, Anuar Khalifi and Dr Omar Kholeif (11:45 am – 12:45 pm CET)One of the most exciting artists working in painting to emerge onto the international scene in recent memory, Anuar Khalifi, who splits his time between Barcelona and Tangier, was the subject of several exhibitions during the global lockdowns associated with Covid-19. Now, in a significant keynote conversation with Dr. Omar Kholeif, the artist takes us through the evolution of his stylistic forms and motifs, from his early pursuits of drawing as a child through to his recent collaboration with artist and musician, Yasiin Bey, AyYa. In their conversation, the duo traces their parallel lives living in multiple diasporas and their broad interests in expanding arts potential to be inclusive of the tensions of being from and of the Global South. They address the stylistic burdens of Orientalism versus modernity and explore the possibilities of pushing these formal limits. They ask: How should one express oneself in the freewheeling 21st century?https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022)Have We Ever Been Modern?Joël AndrianomearisoaChristine EyeneMarie-Cécile ZinsouModerator: Marie-Ann YemsiHow do we negotiate the tension between the notion of old and new; the ‘traditional’ and the contemporary culture produced on the African continent and its diaspora today? Rather than retreating into debates of semantics, this conversation seeks to create a propositional sphere, where social justice is not merely an aspiration but a way of collaboratively thinking through the different means that solidarity around African art can be made manifest. Whether deliberating restitution or the framing of our present discourses of contemporary art, this session seeks to move us beyond the debate of western notions of modernity, in favour of a dichotomous and rapturous sphere of constant dissonance.https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022)FOCUS: Zina Saro-Wiwa followed by an in-person Q&A with Professor Sarah Perks(14:45 pm – 16:15 pm CET)Esteemed artist and filmmaker, Zina Saro-Wiwa, presents a specially curated screening and in-person conversation on her film and video work, including a special preview of an in-development epic feature.From founding the alt-Nollywood movement to a near-mystical obsession with food and drink, Saro-Wiwa’s oeuvre is characterised by storytelling that expands beyond belief systems, producing unique visual encounters that cross geographical, cultural, and metaphysical space. Saro-Wiwa’s films and video installations combine personal and collective emotion with pop culture, reworking global historical cinematic genres from melodrama and sci-fi to biblical epic in order to consider legacies of trauma, historical memory, and the otherworldly potential to transcend them. Here, Saro-Wiwa shares existing works including the influential cult-classic Phyllis (2010), The Deliverance of Comfort (2010), and her acclaimed Table Manners series (2014-2019), alongside the inspiration, ideas, and extracts for a new feature-length work, Eucharia. The session will be moderated by curator and film producer, Professor Sarah Perks, who has a long-standing interest in the artist’s work.https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022)Closing Remarks - Motorised Justice: A Poem for the Drifters1-54 Forum Curator Dr Omar Kholeif closes the day with a lyric poem authored during the course of the Fair and Forumhttps://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022 May 21-22, 2022 (21/05/2022)Under the Influence of Édouard Glissant (1:00pm EST)Martinican poet, novelist, philosopher, and academic, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), is considered one of the greatest writers and thinkers of his generation. What can the theories and writings of Glissant help us to understand about navigating and preserving cultural complexities? How can they operate in artmaking, criticism, and artists serving spaces? Tiana Webb Evans, art maven, brand strategist, and founder of The Jamaica Art Society, with artist Johanna Mirabel, will consider and reconsider these questions and explore Mirabel’s work in this context.https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022 May 21-22, 2022 (21/05/2022)Textiles and the Global Politic of the Black Arts Movement (4:00pm EST)A conversation with Harlem-born fiber artist Dindga McCannon and art collector and gallerist Lewis Long will explore the influence of McCannon’s Harlem upbringing, the politics that gave way to the creation of the Weusi Artist Collective and Where We At Black Women Artists Inc., and the enduring use of textiles in artmaking today.https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022 May 21-22, 2022 (22/05/2022)Archiving, Reclamation, and Authoring Your History (2:00 pm EST)The renaissance of archival resources and collections that center global Black experiences has fostered an appetite for a better understanding of how we define archives and how archival collections can be employed in the cultural arts. Whose narratives do the archives hold and what is missing? Should artists think about the archive as a mode of legacy building? Steven G. Fullwood (Nomadic Archivist Project), ceramicist King Houndekpinkou, Rianna Jade Parker (Brief History of Black British Art), and moderator Novella Ford are storytellers, archivists, researchers, and artists who will engage these questions and share their journeys to and through archives.https://www.1-54.com/