As Art Dubai celebrates its 20th anniversary with a Special Edition at the Madinat Jumeirah Conference & Events Centre from 14–17 May 2026, one of the fair’s most intellectually layered and historically resonant presentations arrives through Efie Gallery. Returning to the fair for the fourth consecutive year, the Dubai-based gallery brings together an intergenerational constellation of artists whose practices collectively trace the evolving visual, political, and material languages of African and diasporic art across nearly a century of production.
Presented at Booth C2, Efie Gallery’s exhibition moves fluidly between archival photography, textile abstraction, sculptural installation, painting, and conceptual image-making. Rather than constructing a singular narrative around geography or identity, the presentation unfolds as a broader meditation on memory, migration, value, transformation, and representation. The gallery brings together works by Kelani Abass, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Samuel Fosso, Abdoulaye Konaté, Aïda Muluneh, Maggie Otieno, Yaw Owusu, and J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije — artists whose practices operate across Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Cuba, Kenya, Nigeria, and wider diasporic contexts.
What makes the presentation particularly compelling is the way it resists easy categorization. Instead of separating historical and contemporary practices, Efie Gallery constructs a conversation across generations, positioning archival material alongside contemporary experimentation. The result is a presentation that not only reflects the increasing global visibility of African and diasporic artists within major art fairs, but also demonstrates the intellectual and aesthetic complexity shaping contemporary artistic production across the continent and its diasporas today.
At the conceptual center of the presentation is an idea of continuity through transformation. Efie Gallery frames the booth as “a considered dialogue across generations,” exploring “the evolving visual languages of African and diasporic practices, from early photographic archives to contemporary explorations of material, identity and memory.” This curatorial approach becomes immediately visible through the relationships established between the artists themselves. Historical documentation sits beside material experimentation; textile-based abstraction encounters conceptual photography; sculptural installations converse with archival memory.
Among the most visually commanding works in the presentation is Ghanaian artist Yaw Owusu’s Heart of a Place (2022), a monumental sculptural installation constructed from UAE fils, US pennies, Ghanaian pesewas, stainless steel, copper wire, and wood. The work functions simultaneously as architecture, archive, and economic metaphor. Owusu, whose practice has increasingly gained international attention, transforms obsolete and circulating currencies into intricate sculptural compositions that interrogate systems of value, extraction, labor, and economic identity. His use of coins from Ghana, the UAE, and the United States establishes a material connection between multiple financial systems and geopolitical realities.
Owusu’s practice emerges from his longstanding engagement with Ghana’s pesewa coins, many of which became obsolete through inflation. After encountering these discarded currencies on Ghana’s southern coast and acquiring them from the Central Bank of Ghana, the artist began subjecting the coins to chemical and organic transformations using salt and vinegar, producing surfaces marked by corrosion, oxidation, and altered value. His Art Dubai presentation extends these concerns into a broader global context, reflecting his movement between Accra and New York, while incorporating the UAE’s own monetary system into the work’s conceptual architecture.
The inclusion of María Magdalena Campos-Pons introduces another dimension to the presentation — one rooted in diasporic interconnectedness, spirituality, and the movement of memory across geographies. The Cuban-born artist, whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, painting, performance, sculpture, and installation, presents Mar Pacífico del Jardín de Amparo (2025), a triptych watercolor, ink, and gouache work on archival paper. Drawing upon flora and fauna native to Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, the work reflects on entangled histories and the interconnectedness of life across continents.
Campos-Pons’ inclusion at Art Dubai arrives during a particularly significant period in her career. Recently featured in the 61st Venice Biennale titled In Minor Keys, she has also participated in major international exhibitions including Documenta 14, the Sharjah Biennial, the Gwangju Biennale, and Desert X AlUla. In 2025, Tate Modern presented a major dedicated display of her work, while her traveling survey exhibition Behold concluded at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Her presence within Efie Gallery’s presentation reinforces the gallery’s commitment to positioning African and diasporic artistic practices within expansive global conversations rather than regional frameworks alone.
The historical depth of the booth becomes especially pronounced through the inclusion of Ghanaian photographer J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije. Widely regarded as one of the foundational figures in West African photography, Bruce-Vanderpuije’s practice documented the cultural and political transformations of Ghana throughout the twentieth century. His photograph Accra Optimists Club (1930s) offers a rare visual glimpse into colonial-era Gold Coast society while simultaneously asserting a distinctly African self-representation beyond colonial framing.
Bruce-Vanderpuije founded the legendary Deo Gratias Studio in Accra in 1922, now considered the oldest operating photography studio in Ghana. Over his lifetime, he produced an archive exceeding 50,000 images, documenting Ghana’s transition from colonial rule to independence while capturing intimate social realities, public ceremonies, portraits, and urban life. Within the context of Efie Gallery’s presentation, his work establishes a historical anchor, reminding viewers that African self-imaging and visual authorship have long existed outside Western institutional validation.
Photography also takes center stage through the inclusion of Cameroonian artist Samuel Fosso, whose performative self-portraiture has become foundational to contemporary African photography discourse. Efie Gallery presents works from Fosso’s celebrated 70’s Lifestyle Series (1974–1978), including Autoportrait SM44 and Autoportrait SM41. These photographs capture the young artist experimenting with identity, style, pose, and performance inside his Bangui studio, drawing inspiration from African American culture and the West African music icon Prince Nico Mbarga.
Fosso’s self-portraits are more than aesthetic exercises; they challenge dominant systems of representation by allowing the artist to inhabit multiple personas and identities on his own terms. Over the decades, his practice has radically reshaped conversations around portraiture, self-fashioning, and Black identity within global contemporary art. His works now reside in institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Fondation Louis Vuitton, and the Guggenheim Museum.
Textile abstraction emerges through the work of Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté, whose monumental fabric-based compositions have long bridged aesthetic experimentation with political and environmental commentary. Efie Gallery presents Tombouctou – motifs (2023), a large-scale woven and dyed textile work measuring 400 by 261 centimeters. Konaté’s practice draws upon West African textile traditions as systems of communication, transforming fabric into both formal language and political expression.
For decades, Konaté has addressed themes ranging from conflict and migration to environmental crisis and spirituality. His work has appeared in institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Zeitz MOCAA, the Venice Biennale, and the Gwangju Biennale. Within the Art Dubai booth, his textile surfaces introduce a rhythmic visual architecture that balances abstraction with emotional and political intensity.
Material transformation also defines the sculptural practice of Kenyan artist Maggie Otieno. Her elongated sculptural figures are constructed from reclaimed railway sleepers originally imported from India during the construction of Kenya’s colonial railway system in 1896. Through carving, assembly, and manipulation, Otieno transforms these weathered industrial remnants into meditative sculptural forms that carry traces of labor, displacement, memory, and resilience. Her work Nakuona – I See You (2026) continues this exploration.
Otieno’s practice operates at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and social memory. The reclaimed railway sleepers become symbolic carriers of colonial histories and human movement, while her figures maintain an emotional quietness that contrasts with the industrial violence embedded within the material itself. Her inclusion within the booth also coincides with her solo exhibition at Efie Gallery in Dubai running from 14 April to 16 May 2026.
Nigerian artist Kelani Abass contributes another archival dimension through his layered mixed-media works that merge photography, painting, text, and found objects. Deeply influenced by his father’s letterpress printing business, Abass explores how memory is stored, reproduced, and fragmented through mechanical and visual systems. His works Scrap of Evidence (Ori ko Epe) and Scrap of Evidence (Akaba) (2024) assemble photographs, letterpress materials, wooden blocks, and painted surfaces into textured memory constructions.
Abass’ work has increasingly gained international recognition, including participation in A World in Common at Tate Modern, New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and exhibitions at Gropius Bau in Berlin. His practice speaks directly to the instability of historical narratives and the role of visual culture in shaping collective memory.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh introduces a striking visual language rooted in symbolism, Afrofuturism, and the representation of African women. Her photographs often combine vivid color fields, painted bodies, and carefully staged compositions to address themes including identity, spirituality, environmental crisis, and gender. Efie Gallery presents works including Know Thyself (2026) and Distant Echoes of Dreams (2019).
Particularly significant is Distant Echoes of Dreams, which addresses the impact of inadequate water access on women living in rural regions. Set against barren landscapes, Muluneh’s carefully composed figures evoke both resilience and vulnerability, transforming documentary concerns into symbolic visual narratives. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including Tate Modern and is held in collections such as MoMA and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
Beyond the individual works themselves, Efie Gallery’s Art Dubai presentation also reflects the growing significance of Dubai as a critical site for contemporary African and diasporic art discourse. Founded by Ghanaian siblings Valentina, Kwame, and Kobi Mintah, the gallery has steadily established itself as one of the leading platforms for African contemporary art in the Middle East. Since opening its permanent space in 2022 and relocating to Alserkal Avenue in 2025, Efie Gallery has expanded its role beyond commercial representation into one focused on institutional dialogue, residency programming, and cross-cultural exchange between Africa, the Middle East, and the wider global art ecosystem.
The gallery’s name itself — “Efie,” the Twi word for “home” — gestures toward broader questions of belonging, migration, and cultural identity. Those concerns echo throughout the Art Dubai presentation, where histories of movement, displacement, and transformation continually resurface through materials, images, and archives.
At a moment when global conversations around African contemporary art are increasingly expanding beyond traditional Western institutional centers, Efie Gallery’s presentation at Art Dubai 2026 feels especially timely. Rather than relying on spectacle alone, the booth constructs a nuanced and deeply researched visual conversation across generations and geographies. It demonstrates how African and diasporic artistic practices continue to reshape global contemporary art through experimentation, historical consciousness, and material innovation.
More importantly, the presentation reveals how artists from Africa and its diasporas are not simply participating in global art conversations, but actively redefining them. Through archives, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, and reclaimed materials, Efie Gallery’s booth becomes a site where memory, identity, labor, spirituality, and value are continuously negotiated — offering one of the most layered and intellectually ambitious presentations at Art Dubai’s landmark 20th anniversary edition.
