1-54 FORUM New York 2019 will be curated by Black Chalk and Co., an artist collective and creative agency that brings together writers, artists, designers, academics, and technologists with a mutual interest in publishing, curating conversations and exhibitions, and facilitating teaching residencies. What animates all these activities is the effort to engender a new culture and new forms of publishing and creative production and the agency’s work has led to a run of synchronized events, screenings, and public talks. Founded by Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Nontsikelelo Mutiti in 2015, Black Chalk and Co. operates between Harare, Zimbabwe, and Richmond, Virginia.

Entry to all 1-54 FORUM talks is free with a 1-54 ticket. Due to limited seating, advanced reservation is highly recommended.

Why don’t you carve other animals

FRIDAY 3 MAY

14:00 – 14:30

The Queen Lozikeyi Lecture

In the late 1990s, Yvonne Vera initiated the Lozikeyi Series, a unique public lecture platform for artists and intellectuals from Zimbabwe and elsewhere to share their views on knowledge production and the creative process. Lozikeyi was a powerful Queen of the Ndebele, and an important advisor to King Lobengula. 1-54 FORUM curators BLACK CHALK & CO. (Nontsikelelo Mutiti, artist and Tinashe Mushakavanhu, writer and scholar) will introduce the 1-54 FORUM programme.

Register here

FRIDAY 3 MAY

15:00 – 16:30

Opening Spaces

“A woman writer must have an imagination that is plain stubborn, that can invent new gods and banish ineffectual ones” wrote Yvonne Vera in her anthology Opening Spacespublished in 1999. Our panelists discuss ways that they have innovated on the notion of spaces for viewing and engaging with art objects and audiences. CATINCA TABACARU (Founder, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery), STEPHANIE BAPTIST (Founder and Director, Medium Tings) and SANDRINE COLARD (Artistic Director, 6th Edition of the Biennale de Lubumbashi) join moderator ADEZE WILFORD (Curatorial Assistant, The Shed)

Register here

FRIDAY 3 MAY

17:00 – 17:30

Screening: KARE KARE ZVAKO – MOTHER’S DAY

A unique opportunity to watch award-winning film KARE KARE ZVAKO – MOTHER’S DAY (2005, 30′). Inspired by a Shona folktale and brought to film as a musical, KARE KARE ZVAKO – MOTHER’S DAY follows the fraught relationship between a mother and father as food becomes scarce in a period of drought. Directed by the renowned Zimbabwean author and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga

Register here

FRIDAY 3 MAY

18:00 – 19:30

From the Pavement, a Gallery: curator as broker

TANDAZANI DHLAKAMA (Assistant Curator and Education Manager, Zeitz MOCAA) and ASHLEY JAMES (Assistant Curator, Brooklyn Museum) are joined by moderator AMBER ESSEIVA (Assistant Curator, Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University) in a discussion around recent projects that extend the role of the curator into the realm of community builder and collaborator

Register here

SATURDAY 4 MAY

11:00 – 11:20

Screening: Afro Promo #1 King Lady

Nora Chipaumire made her debut as film director in 2016 with Afro Promo #1 King Lady, commissioned by Dance for Film on Location at Montclair State University. The award-winning short film is an Afro-feminist manifesto beautifying bodies to claim the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Register here

SATURDAY 4 MAY

11:30 – 13:00

Without A Name: On Living and Working Between Spaces

What are our notions of studio, home and identity in the global art world today? Artists RICHARD MUDARIKI, MIATTA KAWINZI, and LIZANIA CRUZ, will engage in a conversation drawing on their experiences of working across cultural and geographic boundaries. Panel moderated by SIDDHARTHA MITTER (Writer)

Register here

SATURDAY 4 MAY

13:30 – 14:30

A Treehouse in the City of Lagoons (2019)

A performative presentation by artist WURA-NATASHA OGUNJI. Located in a top flat of a seven-story building in Lagos, Nigeria and founded by artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji, The Treehouse is one of the city’s only art spaces dedicated solely to creative experimentation. In this performance presentation Ogunji invokes the artists and atmosphere of this dynamic place. Situated between creek and lagoon, prison and polo fields The Treehouse provides a perfect platform for thinking about how spaces, architecture, and community influence and inform how we move, feel, and imagine the world

Register here

SATURDAY 4 MAY

15:00 – 16:30

Milk and Moon: Black aesthetics, essentialism and futurisms

A conversation about technology and representation with KANEZA SCHAAL (Theatre Artist); AYODAMOLA OKUNSEINDE (Artist and Interactive Designer) and SALOME ASEGA (Artist and Researcher) moderated by NONTSIKELELO MUTITI (Artist and 1-54 FORUM Programme Curator). Panelists will discuss formal aspects of their work in relationship to cultural heritage, identity formation and presentation beyond the 21st century

Register here

SATURDAY 4 MAY

17:00 – 18:00

To Exhibit Means to Show: the making of an artist’s book

STANLEY WOLUKAU-WANAMBWA (Photographer) and DEREK FORDJOUR (Artist), draw on their publications One Wall a Web and FORDJOUR with GEE WESLEY (Co-founder and Co-director, Ulises). The presentation investigates notions of display and the role of publishing artist books from the perspective of the artist

Register here

SUNDAY 5 MAY

11:00 – 12:30

In the Courtyard: a space for Black art

MARIO GOODEN (Principal, Huff Gooden Architects), MABEL WILSON (Associate Professor of Architecture, Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation) and EMANUEL ADMASSU (Founding Partner, AD-WO architectural practice) explore the specificity of architecture as a framing device, a marker of time and a space to hold cultural heritage, past, present and future

Register here

13:00 – 14:30

Butterfly Burning: Performativity and Aesthetics

PALOMA MCGREGOR (Artist and Founding Director of Angela’s Pulse) and MK ABADOO (Choreographer and Assistant Professor, Department of Dance and Choreography, Virginia Commonwealth University) speak to RASHIDA BUMBRAY (Curator and Choreographer) on their movement practices and research

Register here

15:00 – 16:00

The Zulus of New York

ZAKES MDA (Writer, Poet and Painter) reads from his new novel The Zulus of New York(2019) with TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU (Writer-Scholar and 1-54 FORUM Programme Curator) as respondent. The novel, based on historical events in the 1880s, follows Mpiyezintombi, a Zulu, as he is taken to England and later America as a performer

Register here

16:30 – 17:00

Screening: nora

Through performance and dance, award-winning film nora (2008, 35′) follows the life of Zimbabwean dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire. Directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton

Register here

17:15 – 18:00

Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats

NONTSIKELELO MUTITI and TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU (Founding Partners, Black Chalk & Co. and 1-54 FORUM Programme Curators) discuss their recently released publication, Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats (2019). This experimental publication is a thoroughly useful guide to the critical and historical texts on the literary culture of Zimbabwe. It has the advantage of being well focused on the topic and thus serves as an essential point of departure to celebrate notions of beauty as they relate to the literary and the visual, a product of Black Chalk & Co.’s preoccupation with the archive

Register here

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1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, the international art fair dedicated to promoting contemporary art from a diverse set of African perspectives, which will take place May 3-5, 2019 at Industria in the West Village, with a press and VIP Preview on May 2. This year marks the fair’s fifth anniversary in New York, and celebrates the fair’s move to a new Manhattan venue.

With editions in London, New York and Marrakech, 1-54 is an international art fair, initiated by Touria El Glaoui in 2013 is dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Drawing reference to the 54 countries that constitute the African continent, 1-54 is a sustainable and dynamic platform that is engaged in contemporary dialogue and exchange. The 2019 New York edition of 1-54 will welcome 24 galleries from Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Kenya, Martinique, Morocco, Nigeria, Portugal, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, collectively exhibiting the work of more than 65 artists. Each year, 1-54 aims to welcome a diverse and global mix of galleries that are dedicated to supporting and promoting African art and artists from across the world.

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Industria, 775 Washington St, New York, NY 10014, USA
May 3rd -5th 2019

http://1-54.com/

The post The 1-54 FORUM , the fair’s program for the New-York City edition May 3rd-5th 2019 appeared first on Artskop.

Over the past six years, Fair 1-54 (because there are 54 states in Africa) has grown with the market it promotes. Today, its growth strategy seems to be paying off with a successful London edition.

Three trees from Ibrahim El-Salahi welcomed visitors this year to London’s Somerset House for the sixth edition of 1-54, one of the leading fairs in the promotion and recognition of African art and its diaspora. Three trees, as a sign of majesty and growth….

In the aisles, a selection selected from about forty galleries and nearly 130 artists. Remarkably, nearly a quarter of the exhibitors had the audacity to present solo shows. Omar Ba was shown by Art Bärtschi & Cie, who started selling the artist while he was attending the squats in Geneva. As time has passed… In the autumn, Omar Ba opened his second solo exhibition at Templon (Paris). There were also the beautiful projects of Wonga Mancoba for the Mikael Anderson gallery and of the photographer Youssef Nabil for Nathalie Obadia. In all, 18,000 visitors hurried to visit the fair, and not the least, since we saw in its aisles leading institutions, including the curators of the LACMA or the Vuitton Foundation, very attentive to what is happening on the African stages.

On the sales side, this new edition confirmed that contemporary African art is booming. Some, those who remain sceptical, see it as a fashionable phenomenon. More and more, the rating and recognition of African artists is taking on an air of renewal rather than market “ tocade ” – and this is deepening with the structuring of domestic scenes on the continent, as it is the case in Morocco, South Africa and Niger. “The growth and popularity of the fair is a true testimony to the abandonment of Eurocentric art history stories,” observes Touria El Glaoui, the organizer and creator of 1-54.

There have been many acquisitions and, remarkably, it is still possible to shop cheaply. At 1-54, the pieces of many artists are sold for less than $5,000: Soly Cissé at Sulger-Buel Lovell, Màrio Macilau at Ed Cross fine art, Mohamed Lekleti’s drawings at Loft Art Gallery, Mongezi Ncaphayi’s abstractions at SMAC or Zemba Luzamba’s portraits, which worked well. The market still prefers these inexpensive pieces, whether for first-time collectors or for the most experienced, especially when they are so trendy.

At the end of the fair, Touria El Glaoui was radiant. “We are so proud of the journey we have made since our first fair in London in 2013. With our first edition in Marrakech last February and the fourth edition in New York in May, we have developed new audiences for contemporary African art and its diaspora through three fairs and three different continents.”

1-54 has just announced its exhibitors for the next edition that it is organizing in Marrakech, in February 2019, after an inauguration noted for its quality, more than for its sales. New leading galleries will join the event, such as the Poggi gallery (Paris), but also the South African heavyweight Goodman Gallery, or In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc (Paris) and Siniya28 (Marrakech).

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