SO ART Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair Marrakech, taking place from February 5 to 8, 2026. On this occasion, the gallery will present a curated selection of works by Samuel Nnorom, Ange Dakouo, Adjei Tawiah, and Aidan Marak (Nadia Karam).
The gallery’s presentation is structured around a shared inquiry into the notion of surface, understood not as a boundary, but as a site of appearance, relation, and transformation. Painting, textile, and hybrid practices are approached as sensitive languages, capable of inscribing within matter the tensions, fragilities, and forms of coexistence that shape the contemporary world.
Through their respective practices, the artists gathered here shift our attention to what unfolds at the surface of things: where narratives settle, gestures accumulate, and identities are formed and transformed. Long regarded as a mere background, the surface becomes an active space—an inscription site where intimate memory and collective history intersect, where protection meets exposure, and silence gives way to speech.
The works of Samuel Nnorom articulate a reflection on social bonds through globular forms composed of assembled Ankara textiles. Through repetition, accumulation, and material density, his sculptures create relational landscapes in which visibility and concealment, belonging and isolation, are constantly negotiated. Textile operates here as a living archive, carrying fragmented narratives and traces of cultural circulation.
In the work of Ange Dakouo, the surface adopts a more meditative dimension. Paper, thread, and modular forms inspired by amulets and gri-gris give rise to compositions in which fragility becomes structure. Each unit, taken individually, appears vulnerable; together, they form a protective whole. Matter becomes a site of repair and solidarity, where the possibility of a shared equilibrium emerges.
The painting practice of Adjei Tawiah conceives the surface as a space of embodiment. Through dense, stratified materiality, his portraits give form to presences that are both intimate and universal. The face is never treated as mere appearance; it becomes a sensitive territory shaped by history, lived experience, and relation to the other.
Finally, Aidan Marak (Nadia Karam) approaches the surface as a space of friction and language. Through layers of paint, collage, and textual fragments, her works question conditions of visibility, freedom of expression, and the act of speaking out. The female figure, central to her practice, emerges as a site of tension between political engagement and poetic articulation.
Brought together on SO ART Gallery’s stand at 1-54 Marrakech, these works form a constellation of practices in which materiality becomes a space of dialogue. This presentation invites viewers into a careful traversal of a world where the surface reveals, connects, and transforms.
