1-54 London 2026 : Seven Women Artists
From ancestral knowledge to speculative futures, seven artists exploring memory, identity, materiality and belonging.
1-54 London returns at Somerset House
The 14th edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returns to Somerset House, London, from 15 to 18 October 2026, bringing together galleries and artistic practices from across Africa and its diasporas.
Across painting, ceramics, textiles and sculpture, women artists continue to expand the possibilities of contemporary artistic expression, drawing on personal histories, ancestral knowledge and cultural traditions to question inherited narratives and imagine new futures.
Their growing visibility also invites a closer examination of representation within the art market. According to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2026, women accounted for 50% of artists represented by surveyed primary-market galleries in 2025, yet their works generated only 44% of sales by value. While representation has progressed, commercial disparities persist.
At 1-54 London this year, these questions find resonance in artistic practices that move between the intimate and the collective, the material and the symbolic. From April Bey's speculative universes to Bisila Noha's decolonial approach to ceramics and Tizta Berhanu's explorations of human connection, each artist offers a distinctive perspective on contemporary experience, we highlight seven women artists to discover, or rediscover, at this year's fair.
April Bey : Imagining Black futures
193 GALLERY . PARIS / ST-TROPEZ / VENICE
April Bey in her studio
Through vibrant colours, unconventional materials and an imaginative visual language, April Bey constructs worlds in which Black identity, femininity and queer experiences occupy the centre of the narrative. Born in The Bahamas in 1987, Bey works across textiles, painting and installation, incorporating faux fur, glitter, vinyl and digitally woven fabrics. Her practice engages with feminism, post-colonialism and speculative fiction, creating alternative realities that challenge dominant representations of Black life.
Her artistic universe offers a space for self-definition, where cultural identity becomes a source of imagination, empowerment and collective possibility. With works held in public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Bey makes her first appearance at 1-54 London with 193 Gallery whom she has been collaborating with in the past including Paris AKAA art fair in 2023.
Featured artwork: COLONIAL SWAG: That Demisexual Panromantic Solo Polyamorist Gyal, 2025 Jacquard woven textiles digitally designed, crushed velvet, glitter, resin, metallic thread, on panel. · 177.8 × 152.4 cm
Bisila Noha : Reclaiming ancestral knowledge through clay
THE SOUTHERN ART HUB . LONDON / NOMAD
Bisila Noha
For Bisila Noha, ceramics become a means of questioning established artistic hierarchies and reconnecting with histories of making that have often been marginalised within Western art narratives.
Born in Spain in 1988, with Equato-guinean heritage, Noha combines wheel-throwing, coiling and carving to produce sculptural forms that engage with identity, femininity and ancestral craftsmanship. Her practice approaches clay not simply as a material but as a repository of knowledge, carrying the gestures and traditions of generations of makers.
Through a feminist and decolonnial perspective, she challenges the distinctions between art and craft, questioning whose knowledge is recognised and preserved. Her work is represented in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Crafts Council and the National Museum of Scotland. In September 2026, she received the inaugural Tacchini Prize.
At 1-54 London, Noha as part of Feeling Pure Magic, a group presentation conceptualised by Simon Njami for The Southern Art Hub.
Featured artwork: The Lost Bronze Clay, 2026 Clay 50 x 30 cm.
Joke Amusan : The language of belonging
AFFINITY GALLERY . LAGOS
Joke Amusan
Joke Amusan has been weaving the experiences of Black womanhood in sharp red letters as bold statements. For the Germano-Nigerian artist, the black womanhood is inseparable from questions of migration, cultural inheritance and belonging.
Born in 1998 and based in London, Amusan creates textile-based installations and sculptures that explore the complexities of navigating multiple identities. Working with materials such as hessian and yarn, she transforms everyday fibres into expressions of personal and collective memory.
Her practice places particular emphasis on the experiences and voices of Black women, using art as a means of connection and shared reflection. In To Return Is To Find The Parts Of Myself That Never Left (2026), the words themselves become part of the artwork, suggesting that belonging is not necessarily a destination but something carried within oneself.
Presented by Affinity Gallery, Amusan's work invites viewers to consider how identity persists, transforms and is rediscovered across geographies and generations.
Featured artwork: To Return Is To Find The Parts Of Myself That Never Left, 2026. Hessian and yarn, 100 × 82 cm.
Maliza Kiasuwa : The invisible threads of connection
FILAFRIQUES GALLERY . GENEVA
Maliza Kiasuwa
Working at the intersection of sculpture and textile art, Maliza Kiasuwa investigates the relationships between identity, memory and the natural world.
Born in 1975, with Romanian and Congolese heritage, Kiasuwa brings together raw, organic and transformed materials to create intricate compositions inspired by the structures and interconnected systems of living organisms.
In her Rhizomes series, ropes, fibres and threads evoke roots and networks that extend beyond what is immediately visible. These forms suggest the complexity of human relationships and cultural inheritance, where individual histories remain connected to larger collective experiences.
Her work explores the tension between fragility and resilience, proposing an understanding of identity as something continuously shaped through exchange, transformation and connection.
Featured artwork: Rhizome 5, 2026. Wool, threads, raphia and synthetic on felt panel . Total : 3 modules of 50/70 cm
Sabrina Da Silva Medeiros : Painting ancestral memory
THE SOUTHERN ART HUB . LONDON
Sabrina Da Silva de Medeiros
For Brazilian multidisciplinary artist Sabrina Da Silva Medeiros, painting and sculpture provide a means of reconnecting with ancestral histories and questioning the erasure of cultural identities.
Born in 1998 and based in France, Da Silva Medeiros draws on Afro-Brazilian culture, spiritual traditions and collective memory to develop a visual language in which figurative forms emerge through diffuse compositions and layered surfaces.
Her work explores the relationship between personal identity and histories shaped by colonialism, creating images that move between the physical and spiritual worlds. Rather than offering fixed representations, her compositions invite viewers to consider how memories, rituals and cultural practices survive across generations.
Her work has been exhibited at Fondation Fiminco, CAC Meudon and the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. Selected to participate in the Dakar Biennale 2026, she joins The Southern Art Hub's presentation Feeling Pure Magic at 1-54 London.
Featured artwork: Quem me navega I, 2026, Oil on canvas
Tizta Berhanu : The intimacy of human connection
ADDIS FINE ART
Tizta Berhanu
In the paintings of Ethiopian artist Tizta Berhanu, human relationships unfold through intimate gestures, intertwined bodies and dreamlike compositions.
Born in 1991 and based in Addis Ababa, Berhanu explores femininity, emotional vulnerability and the complexities of interpersonal connection. Her figures appear suspended in ambiguous spaces, sometimes embracing, sometimes withdrawn, suggesting the shifting boundaries between closeness and solitude.
Through her distinctive treatment of colour and form, she creates compositions that evoke tenderness while leaving room for uncertainty. These scenes invite viewers to reflect on their own emotional experiences, and on the ways in which intimacy can coexist with isolation.
Presented by Addis Fine Art, Berhanu will introduce new works at 1-54 London, extending her exploration of human connection through painting.
Featured artwork: Together, Alone, 2026. Oil on canvas, 200 × 250 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Addis Fine Art.
Xanthe Somers : The politics of domestic objects
OCTOBER GALLERY
For Zimbabwean artist Xanthe Somers, domestic objects carry the traces of social structures, inherited expectations and overlooked histories.
Born in 1992, Somers combines ceramics, basketry and Zimbabwean textile traditions to create elaborate sculptural forms that question the relationship between craft, labour and power. Her hand-coiled sculptures draw on familiar domestic references while transforming them into unexpected, often unsettling objects.
At 1-54 London, October Gallery presents Carer, Cleaner, Mother, Maker, a new series examining women's labour, postcolonial histories and environmental injustice across the Global South.
Through what she describes as the “subtle treason of objects”, Somers reveals how seemingly ordinary materials can embody political and social tensions. The recurring motif of unravelling becomes a metaphor for fragility, memory and social cohesion, reclaiming craft as a powerful means of making women's experiences visible.
Xanthe Sommers posing in front of Cleaner, Carer, Mother, Maker
Featured artwork: Cleaner, Carer, Mother, Maker, 2026. Glazed stoneware, 115 × 70 × 70 cm. Courtesy of the artist and October Gallery. Booths S7 & S8
Beyond representation: Expanding the narratives
What connects these seven artists is not a single aesthetic or shared definition of womanhood, but their ability to engage with histories and experiences through distinct material and conceptual approaches. Textiles become instruments of memory and belonging; ceramics challenge established hierarchies between art and craft; painting opens spaces for intimacy, imagination and cultural reclamation. Across these practices, inherited knowledge is not treated as something static, but as a living resource through which new narratives can emerge.
As women artists gain greater visibility across international fairs and institutions, the question extends beyond representation alone. It concerns how their work is collected, interpreted, valued and preserved over time. At 1-54 London 2026, these seven practices offer compelling perspectives on those conversations, reminding us that contemporary art from Africa and its diasporas is shaped by a plurality of voices, experiences and artistic languages.
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair Somerset House, London 15–18 October 2026 · Press & VIP Preview: 15 October more information : https://www.1-54.com/london/
