According to Touria El Glaoui, “95% of African art is bought by non-African collectors.” Nevertheless, she believes that “Sustainability in the African art industry will come with the growth of collectors in local African markets.” And she has been hard at work to ensure this becomes a reality with her all-women team. Together, they are on a mission to showcase the cultural and financial value of African art. 

1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair is the leading international art fair dedicated to African art. What began in London in 2013 with seventeen galleries, has now grown into an international fair with annual editions in London, New York, Marrakech and Paris. For El Glaoui, her team and all seventeen galleries involved in the first show, 1-54 was a high-risk venture. While there were stellar artists, curators and gallerists on the scene before 2013, contemporary African art could hardly be found at international shows and festivals. Today, getting a spot at the fair entails a selective process that is emblematic of the intentionality that has sustained it. Staying true to her vision to revitalise the global art industry with African art, El Glaoui partnered with Christie’s in the thick of the pandemic last year to deliver an online activation of the fair for even greater accessibility worldwide. Being an entrepreneur in the art industry, like any industry, means making hard decisions and wielding a vast network of experience and expertise. Touria El Glaoui speaks with AMAKA about the specific moments and decisions that have shaped the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair journey.

AMAKA: What was the scene like before you created 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair? What predecessors did you learn from?

Touria El Glaoui: When I was researching for this project, I visited other models of contemporary art fairs around the world, thanks to my job then. Travelling around the continent, I was always unbelievably enthusiastic about the creativity that I saw. But when I returned to Europe or the US, there would be absolutely no trace of what I had seen around Africa. The international fairs would typically only have about 0.05% of their artists coming from the continent. That figure is now around 4% to show you how much farther we still have to go.  

I also met a lot of great people in the preparation phase for 1-54, people like Simon Njami and Koyo Kouoh, now director of Zeitz MOCAA, who are both incredible curators. They were among the academics who created the foundational writings on African artists that are now becoming the pillars of the contemporary African art field. African art was also missing out on the market side of things. From a business perspective, as soon as there is money somewhere you know people get more interested. There grows more visibility and excitement. So, a significant thing we brought to the table was to have an edition every year that gave people easier access and a more straightforward facility to buy African art in the capitals of the international contemporary art world. I think we have made a huge difference there.

Contemporary 1-54’s partnership with Somerset House appears critical for the fair’s exposure. You and your team take advantage of the space too. Who can forget Zak Ove’s spectacular installation that graced the courtyard in 2016, among others since then. What has this partnership meant for 1:54?

We consider Somerset House to be our spiritual home in London. They have continued to give us more space in their building and even shift their programming to align with ours. This is very important because no other institution in London is doing this.

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When Contemporary 1-54 came on the art scene, what was the initial response to your programme like? And what kept you going?

It was such a hard thing to pull off! Starting with finding seventeen galleries willing to take a bet on 1-54 that first year. In those first two years, I did not have investment money from anybody, it was all seed money from sponsors. We were on a tight budget, and so we chose Frieze week to maximise exposure to the collectors in town. On the second morning of our very first year, I remember the complaints from collectors from Frieze flooding in. All the galleries had sold out on the first day! We did fantastically in terms of press. London was a necessary first choice because I was living in London, my network was vast there and there’s the strong relationship the UK has with Africa. And our success in London encouraged us to go to New York. I thought, “why not speed up the process of inclusion.”

Between your decade-plus experience working in the banking, tech and telecom industries and growing up with Hassan El Glaoui as your father, how did your background prepare you for a venture like 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair? 

I did not know when I was studying finance or watching my father that 1-54 would be the result, but I can say that because of them, this venture has come very naturally to me. My corporate background was a blessing in disguise. Through it, I was able to travel extensively around Africa and the Middle East, exploring all those different art ecologies that moved me and helped me cultivate a truly global view of the world. 

 With my father, he had his studio in the heart of our home, and I grew up seeing him deal with galleries, museums and collectors. So, when I started this project, I was comfortable talking to people in the industry. His journey also helped me understand what was lacking in the industry for African artists. I remember helping him organise his last show in London. He was in Morocco and was not able to get a visa to come to London. I was able to see all those little particularities with shipments, import/export duties and the like, which discourage galleries and collectors outside the continent from doing business with artists based in the continent. And there is the abysmal ratio of the number of galleries to the number of artists on the continent. All this makes for a different, more difficult, career path compared to the young artist coming out from art school in the US or London.

The art industry is spectacularly white and male, and historically rooted in the West. How do you navigate this space as an entrepreneurial African woman?

On this subject, there is no way to know if being a man would have made this venture easier to run. Discussions with some of the sponsors may have gone differently because sometimes it is a men’s club up there. But that’s something I would never know. Even though it has been challenging, we can still see a positive outlook in the industry for women. There are so many of us in this space. Relatedly, sometimes I’m sceptical about conversations that focus particularly on women breaking ground because they tend to take the position that women have not done anything on said ground before. That’s short-sighted and only silences or ignores the past. Women have always come before us, loosening barriers up so we can have it easier in the future.

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What do you think about the criticism often levelled against 1-54, that the art fair’s all-African geographic scope diminishes the nuances of being an African or ostracises African artists even further in the industry?

I agree that words can be powerful, that they can either unite or negate a group. In our case, we use our words to unite and empower, not to insulate. I know that as an artist, you would not want to be categorised in a way that diminishes what you do. What does ‘African artist’ really mean? And so, we take it seriously for people to understand that we are not pretending to represent the entire variety of the continent. Our educational programme, for example, is one of those efforts. I always say that the best death of 1-54 would be that it does not have to exist because African galleries get invited as commonplace in international art fairs and African artists are recognised on par with their contemporaries.

Since this journey began in 2013, what has been your most memorable challenge and at the same time, highlight?

Having a successful first year was extremely memorable. In my experience as an entrepreneur, your work is believing in an idea that has not yet been materialised. It’s a challenging and lonely journey. On the last day of the first edition, I think we all cried—my team, the galleries, the artists, everybody who was there on the last day. 2020 was a big one too, as a highlight and challenge at the same time. When nobody was doing a fair in October last year, I was the only one crazy enough to go ahead with having a physical presence in London and to do a Paris edition for the first time. That allowed us to emphasise our presence and resilience, and to design new initiatives like the online partnership with Christie’s. It was an emotional rollercoaster.

What is something you wish people unfamiliar with the global art industry (and people within it too) understood better about contemporary African art and the business of building a platform like 1-54?

It is that we are talking about 54 countries with different histories, languages and cultures inside each one. Artists and other cultural makers and thinkers in them are producing unique work in response to their different environments. When I call 1-54 ‘1-54’, I’m underlying this multiplicity. With a platform like 1-54, we have been able to open more people’s minds to think about African art beyond masks and the traditional/classical. It takes time. I see more people going to graduate school to write theses on the African art industry. We are starting to see more progress in terms of sales, visibility of interest and willingness to engage with African art on a deep, deep, level. 

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to London for its 2022 edition on 13-16 October.