AFIKARIS GALLERY at 1-54 LONDON
Mouhcine Rahaoui, Cimetière des anges, 2024. 100x100 cm / 39x39 in. Mixed media (coal, candles and glue) on canvas mounted on panel. Courtesy of AFIKARIS Gallery and the artists
OZIOMA ONUZULIKE (B.1972, NIGERIA)
BOLUWATIFE OYEDIRAN (B.1997, NIGERIA)
MOUHCINE RAHAOUI (B.1990, MOROCCO)
GÉRALDINE TOBE (B.1992, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO)
HERVÉ YAMGUEN (B.1971, CAMEROON)
For this year’s Londondonian edition of the 1-54 art fair, marking its fifth participation, AFIKARIS proposes a booth curated around the exploration of matter and colors. Each of the five artists explores innovative ways of working with traditional mediums: from clay to painting. On view, Hervé Yamguen’s bronze sculptures, Mouhcine Rahaoui’s works with coal and wax, Géraldine Tobe’s pictures made of smoke on canvas, Ozioma Onuzulike’s clay and glass tapestries and Boluwatife Oyediran’s blue portraits question humans’ relationships between them as well as with the universe itself.
Left. Ozioma Onuzulike. Royal Babariga for el Rufai II, 2024. 170x140x10 cm / 67x55x4 in. Earthenware and stoneware clays, ash glazes, recycled glasses, and copper wire glasses, and copper wire. Right. Ozioma Onuzulike. Imperial Blosue for the First Lady II. 116x107x10 cm / 45x42x4 in. Earthenware and stoneware clays, ash glazes, recycled. Courtesy of AFIKARIS Gallery and the artist
OZIOMA ONUZULIKE
OZIOMA ONUZULIKE WAS BORN IN 1972 IN ACHI, ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN SNUKKA WHERE HE TEACHES CERAMIC ART AND AFRICAN ART AND DESIGN HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA.
Onuzulike graduated from the department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria. He is also a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Centre, Umbertide, Perugia, Italy, where he undertook a residency under the UNESCO-ASCHBERG Bursary for Artists, and is an alumni of the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, USA.
A ceramic artist and poet, Onuzulike’s work largely focuses on the historical and sociological roots of the political and socio-economic turmoil in Africa and their debilitating effects on daily living on the continent. He often explores the aesthetic, symbolic and metaphorical nature of clay (his basic material) and the clay-working processes – pounding, crushing, hammering, wedging, grinding, cutting, pinching, punching, perforating, burning, firing – in his making of the multiple units that characterise his mixed-media projects.
The artist had an institutional solo exhibition: at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019, along with a presentation of his poetry collection of the same title, also published by the CCA. Onuzulike’s works were included in the Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times exhibition held at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. His work has also been featured in international art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York, 1-54 London, artgenève and Art Brussels.
Above. Boluwatife Oyediran, Plants of America, 2024. 183x122 cm / 72x48 in. Oil and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of AFIKARIS Gallery and the artist
BOLUWATIFE OYEDIRAN
BOLUWATIFE OYEDIRAN WAS BORN IN NIGERIA IN 1997. HE CURRENTLY LIVES AND WORKS INnRHODE ISLAND, USA.
After a period at the Noldor Residency in Accra in 2021-2022, Ghana, Boluwatife Oyediran pursued his artistic career at the Rhode Island School of Design, from which he recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting.
A contemporary figurative painter, Oyedrian’s practice reflects his deep commitment to exploring Black identity, which he reimagines and reorients within the canons of history, religion and Western art.
Oyediran’s early works used cotton as a central symbol of his thinking. They encouraged reflection on historical systemic oppression, by questioning the links between the history of fashion, the history of cotton and the way in which these histories are linked to Black labour.
His ongoing conceptual research – which is a continuation of his previous body of work – led him to develop the concept of ‘Inverted Blackness’. In these new portraits Black figures are painted in negative; their bodies are blue and luminous, as though going through a transformative and otherworldly experience. The people who populate his new paintings are immigrants and nonimmigrants who left the African continent to settle in the United States. This new series will be the subject of a second solo exhibition at the AFIKARIS gallery in autumn 2024, entitled Inverted Blackness and accompanied by a publication of the same name.
Boluwatife Oyediran has had two solo gallery exhibitions: Point of Correction at AFIKARIS Gallery in Paris in January 2022 and For Boiz Like Me Who’ve Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf at 1957 Gallery in Accra in the summer of 2022. His work has also been shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Krems, Austria, as part of the exhibition The New African Portraiture. Shariat Collections curated by Ekow Eshun.
Left. Géraldine Tobe. Royaume des Damnés, 2021. 200x170 cm / 79x67 in. Smoke on canvas. Right. Géraldine Tobe. Voyage dans le temps, 2021.170x140 cm / 67x55 in. Smoke on canvas. Courtesy of AFIKARIS Gallery and the artist
GÉRALDINE TOBE
GÉRALDINE TOBE WAS BORN IN 1992 IN KINSHASA IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO WHERE SHE LIVES AND WORKS.
She finished her studies in painting at the Institut des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa in 2012. Not satisfied with her paintings, she burnt her canvases. She then began to paint with the smoke from an oil lamp, linking her art to the traumas of her childhood: night, fire and spirits. Seeing art as a way of soothing the soul, Géraldine Tobe has created a cultural structure (Losa) in Kinshasa which organises art therapy workshops for psychiatric patients.
Accused of witchcraft as a child and subjected to a violent exorcism, her work now questions ancestral beliefs and the place of the coloinzer’s religion. She imbues her work with her suffering and the pain of women and the Congolese people. Her paintings deal with ethnography with a more specific focus on the church in colonial history and ancestral spirituality. In her canvases, African masks mingle with disjointed, dancing bodies. She says that using fire and smoke enables her to link the immaterial and physical worlds.
Tobe’s work attracted particular attention during the 2018 Dakar Biennial. It has also been the subject of solo exhibitions in Brussels, Kinshasa and Madagascar. It will be part of the upcoming exhibition The True Size of Africa at the Völklinger Hütte in Germany.
Above. Mouhcine Rahaoui. L’mina, 2024.150x150 cm / 59x59 in. Mixed media (coal, resin and coal plastic bags) on panel Courtesy of AFIKARIS Gallery and the artist
MOUHCINE RAHAOUI
MOUHCINE RAHAOUI WAS BORN IN 1990 IN JERADA, MOROCCO. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN MARRAKECH.
Mouhcine Rahaoui graduated from the Tetouan School of Fine Arts in 2017. His work explores the experience and history of miners in the Oriental region, particularly in his home town of Jerada. He offers an immersion into the meanders of his memory and his relationship with the raw reality of a town where the only way to survive is to ‘take the rabbit trail’, confronting the likelihood of not getting out. According to urban legend, a Belgian forest ranger stumbled upon a coal deposit in the late 1920s after having followed a black rabbit covered in coal. This event led to the first mining operations in the town of Jerada.
Mouhcine Rahaoui questions the absurdity of life in its unreasonable and unfair nature. The mine confirms humans’ fragility in the face of the unpredictability of the mountain that feeds them and sometimes swallows them up. Mouhcine Rahaoui tells the story of these dangerous, clandestine expeditions to extract the coal that sustains life and gently consumes it. Mouhcine Rahaoui wonders why working there, in Jerada, leads to death rather than life.
Through a series of reproductions, installations and ready-mades, cataloguing the miner’s tools - torches, helmets, gloves, ropes - in a dominant shade of black, Mouhcine Rahaoui plunges the viewer into the aesthetics of the worker and informs us, through a visceral gesture, of his fate, sealed by the mine like an immutable destiny.
Mouhcine Rahaoui’s work has been the subject of two solo exhibitions: one at the Comptoir des Mines Gallery in Marrakech in 2023 and the other at AFIKARIS Gallery in 2024. It has also been shown at Art Paris, 1-54 London and artgenève.
Left. Hervé Yamguen. 4 horizons, 2024. 49x37x18 cm / 19x15x7 in. Sculpture. Bronze. Right. Hervé Yamguen. Porteur des mondes I, 2024. 44x30x12 cm / 17x11x3 in. Sculpture. Bronze. Courtesy of AFIKARIS Gallery and the artist
HERVÉ YAMGUEN
HERVÉ YAMGUEN WAS BORN IN 1971 IN DOUALA, CAMEROON, WHERE HE LIVES AND WORKS.
A self-taught artist, Hervé Yamguen has developed his expertise over thirty years of eclectic artistic practice, touching on fields such as writing, visual arts, performance and theatrical set design. In 1998, alongside several artists, including Salifou Lindou, he co-founded Cercle Kapsiki, an initiative aimed at integrating art into Douala’s urban space through the organization of exhibitions, projects and residencies, inviting artists from all over the world to transform the public space.
Hervé Yamguen’s work draws on a deep current of consciousness. His art aims to transcend the everyday, to go beyond tangible reality to explore wider spheres of existence. His bronze sculptures, characterized by hybrid beings combining human, animal and plant forms, question the links within the living world, symbolizing metamorphoses that celebrate a communion between beings. Through his creations, Hervé Yamguen invites the viewer to a contemplation imbued with wonder, revealing the strengths and beauty of existence.
Recently inducted as a notable in his father’s village in western Cameroon, Hervé Yamguen revives traditions and rituals while maintaining his perspective as a contemporary artist. This duality between cultural heritage and modern artistic expression marks his work, bridging past and present.
His work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Musée du quai Branly for the exhibition “Sur la route des chefferies du Cameroun” in 2022. In 2016, his sculptures were praised by art critic Philippe Dagen in Le Monde while exhibited at AKAA art fair in Paris, underlining the international recognition of his talent and work. From 2023 onwards, Hervé Yamguen’s work was exhibited at international fairs such as 1-54 in London (UK) and Marrakech (Morocco), and artgenève (Switzerland). In February 2024, his first solo exhibition in Europe was held at the AFIKARIS gallery, embodying thirty years of artistic practice.
ABOUT THE GALLERY
Founded in 2018 by Florian Azzopardi, to promote emerging and established artists from Africa and its diaspora, AFIKARIS Gallery opened a dedicated Paris-based gallery space in 2021. Engaged in promoting cross-cultural and disciplinary exchange, AFIKARIS acts as a platform for artists to engage with the wider public. A mirror and space for reflection on the contemporary African art scene, it provides artists with a space to address the topical local and international issues at the heart of their art.
The AFIKARIS programme includes group and solo exhibitions, art fairs, publications and institutional partnerships. In 2023, the gallery opened its artist residency on the outskirts of Paris. The residency is a place dedicated to creation, at the disposal of the artists working with the gallery or who wish to develop a project for a future presentation with the gallery. In November 2022, the gallery enriched its programmation with a ‘Project Room’: an innovative and experimental program situated within the gallery’s final room. The ‘Project Room’ acts as a dynamic and flexible platform to present specific projects, enriching the
curatorial choices of the gallery with new proposals.
1-54 LONDON
AFIKARIS, STAND E1
Somerset House
Strand
London WC2R 1LA, UK
DATES AND TIMES
PREVIEW
9:30 AM – 9 PM | Thursday, October 10th
PUBLIC OPENING TIMES
11 AM – 7 PM | Friday – Saturday
11 AM – 6 PM | Sunday OZIOMA ONUZULIKE
For more information about these artists about these artists and the Afikaris Gallery at 1-54 London, please visit the site here. The gallery can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and Artsy. For information about 1-54 London please visit here
