As 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to New York for its twelfth edition at the Starrett-Lehigh Building from May 13–17, 2026, the fair once again positions itself as more than a marketplace. This year’s programme extends beyond gallery presentations into a layered curatorial framework that brings together Special Projects, a major Special Installation, and a series of cross-disciplinary collaborations that deepen conversations around the African diaspora, the Black Atlantic, environmental justice, and contemporary identity.
Together, these components reflect a growing shift within the fair—one that prioritizes research-driven exhibitions, spatial experimentation, and expanded artistic formats that challenge how art is encountered, contextualized, and lived.
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Brazil Beyond Brazil
Curated by Igor Simões
At the center of the 2026 edition is Brazil Beyond Brazil, a major curated presentation led by Brazilian curator, writer, and scholar Igor Simões. Framing Afro-Brazilian artistic production within a global diasporic context, the exhibition challenges longstanding narratives that have historically reduced Black Brazilian art to folkloric or culturally stereotyped readings.
Bringing together artists including Jaime Lauriano, No Martins, Lidia Lisbôa, Rebeca Carapiá, Rommulo Vieira Conceição, Helô Sanvoy, Ana Cláudia Almeida, Luana Vitra, and Diego Mouro, the presentation resists simplified interpretations rooted in religiosity, music, or tropical aesthetics. Instead, it foregrounds practices that engage archives, rework art histories, and interrogate visual languages across geographies.
Rather than positioning Afro-Brazilian art as a subset of national identity, Brazil Beyond Brazil asserts it as a complex and evolving field—one that demands a structural rethinking of how Black artistic production is framed both within Brazil and internationally. The exhibition ultimately proposes a shift in perspective, urging audiences to move beyond imposed narratives toward a more expansive understanding of diasporic artistic agency.
Black Forest / Black Forest Library / Black Forest School
By Ekene Ijeoma
Bridging art, ecology, and social practice, Black Forest is an ongoing, artist-led initiative by Ekene Ijeoma that transforms environmental action into a living monument to Black life. Developed over more than a decade, the project has facilitated the planting of over 40,000 trees across the United States, Africa, and the diaspora, addressing both environmental inequities and racial injustice.
At 1-54 New York, the project unfolds through multiple interconnected components. The Black Forest Library takes the form of an installation constructed from hundreds of milk crates, housing a curated archive of books, seeds, plants, and artworks. This evolving archive operates as both a repository and a space of learning, centering Black relationships to land, ecology, and memory.
Alongside this, the launch of Black Forest School introduces a traveling educational platform designed to create spaces for knowledge exchange and community engagement around nature from Black and non-White perspectives.
Emerging in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, Black Forest extends beyond symbolic gestures, positioning trees as both ecological interventions and commemorative acts—living entities that clean air, reshape urban environments, and honor Black lives across generations.
Vilanismo: Collective Practices of Refusal across the Black Atlantic
TZ Production Company x Vilanismo
In Vilanismo: Collective Practices of Refusal across the Black Atlantic, the act of exhibition itself is placed under scrutiny. Developed through a collaboration between TZ Production Company and the Vilanismo collective, the project interrogates the conditions under which Blackness is produced, displayed, and consumed.
Rooted in sociologist Tukufu Zuberi’s inquiry and Vilanismo’s ongoing collective practice, the project introduces the figure of the “villain” as a conceptual strategy—one that resists legibility, disrupts imposed narratives, and asserts autonomy. Rather than conforming to traditional exhibition formats, the installation operates as a hybrid environment: part studio, part domestic space, and part site of gathering.
By collapsing distinctions between artwork and lived space, the project transforms display into occupation and curation into what the collaborators describe as “co-conspiracy.” Drawing connections between Brazil’s urban peripheries and New York, Vilanismo creates a transatlantic dialogue that foregrounds survival, dignity, and self-representation.
Ultimately, the work reorients the viewer’s experience—from passive observation to relational engagement—challenging the spectacle-driven logic of contemporary exhibition-making.
Entanglements
Presented by TM Arthouse (TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation)
With Entanglements, TM Arthouse—launched in 2026 by the TOUT-MONDE Art Foundation—presents a group exhibition that explores identity as a layered and composite condition shaped by histories of migration, colonialism, and cultural exchange.
Bringing together artists from the Caribbean and Amazonian regions, the exhibition unfolds as a dense and multi-vocal environment where materials, symbols, and narratives intersect. Featuring artists such as Nyugen Smith, Chantalea Commin, Tania L. Balan-Gaubert, NouN, Eymric Moderne, Thierry Alet, and Edouard Duval-Carrié, the presentation spans embroidery, sculpture, woodwork, metal, and photography.
Rather than offering linear narratives, Entanglements operates as a contemporary “Babel”—a space of fragmentation and recomposition where identities are continuously negotiated. Spiritual codes, vegetal and animal forms, and domestic objects converge into hybrid structures that resist singular interpretation.
Foregrounding cacophony over coherence, the exhibition proposes identity not as fixed, but as something formed through layering, distortion, and polyphony—reflecting the complex realities of diasporic existence.
SPECIAL INSTALLATION
David Krut Arts x kumalo | turpin
The fair’s primary Special Installation is a collaborative presentation by David Krut Arts and kumalo | turpin, bringing together a multigenerational group of artists whose practices engage with identity, memory, and material experimentation.
Featured artists include Boemo Diale, Nthabiseng Kekana, William Kentridge, Stephen Langa, Lusanda Ndita, and Nathaniel Sheppard III. Working across printmaking, drawing, collage, and mixed media, the installation reflects David Krut Workshop’s long-standing commitment to collaborative production and technical innovation.
Rooted in Johannesburg’s Arts on Main, the workshop has played a significant role in nurturing generations of artists through shared resources, knowledge exchange, and experimentation across print techniques such as intaglio, relief, and monotype.
Within the context of 1-54, the installation highlights both continuity and evolution—bringing together emerging and established voices in a dialogue that spans personal histories, political narratives, and collective memory. The result is a layered presentation that emphasizes process as much as outcome, foregrounding the role of collaboration in shaping contemporary artistic practice.
COLLABORATIONS & PARTNER ACTIVATIONS
INFINIMENT COTY PARIS x Evans Mbugua
Expanding the fair’s engagement with cross-disciplinary practices, INFINIMENT COTY PARIS continues its partnership with 1-54 through a collaboration that merges art, design, and fragrance.
For the 2026 edition, Kenyan artist Evans Mbugua presents a work that reinterprets the fragrance ATOMES CROCHUS using Coty’s signature stackable bottles as a medium. Rooted in the concept of “artcycling,” the project transforms functional objects into sites of artistic expression, blurring boundaries between product design and contemporary art.
This collaboration reflects a broader shift within the fair—where artistic production extends beyond traditional formats into new material and conceptual territories, engaging audiences through sensory and experiential dimensions.
ONMT Lounge (Global Destination Partner)
As part of its continued partnership with 1-54, the Office National Marocain du Tourisme (ONMT) presents a curated lounge environment that highlights Morocco’s cultural and creative landscape.
Designed as a space for encounter and reflection, the lounge moves beyond branding to function as a cultural interface—positioning Morocco as both a historical and contemporary hub within global artistic networks.
A PLATFORM EXPANDING BEYOND THE BOOTH
With its 2026 edition, 1-54 New York reinforces its role as a platform where exhibition-making becomes a site of inquiry. Through its Special Projects and installations, the fair expands beyond the traditional booth model, creating space for practices that are research-driven, process-oriented, and deeply embedded in social, political, and environmental contexts.
From Afro-Brazilian artistic reconfigurations and Black ecological archives to collective practices of refusal and Caribbean entanglements, the programme reflects a broader shift in contemporary art—one that moves from representation toward structural transformation.
In doing so, 1-54 continues to shape not only how African and diasporic art is seen, but how it is understood, experienced, and situated within the global cultural landscape.
