Nine Artists Not to Miss at 1-54 London

With more than 50 international galleries participating this year—including over a dozen debuts—1-54 delivers a visual feast that spans the full breadth of African and diasporic talent, from Mónica de Miranda’s courtyard installation Earthworks to “ęmí: freedomsong,” the audio-visual installation inspired by bell hooks’ All About Love and Camille Sapara Barton’s Tending Grief, to “The Sartorial Spirit of Punk Tailors” and its limited collaborative capsule. Among so much to love, the following nine artists brought work that stood out from the crowd.

Serwan Baran

• Gallery Misr

An outlier as a non-African artist, Iraqi painter Serwan Baran directly speaks to themes connecting Africa and Iraq with global challenges and hardships. Among these are experiences of war and displacement. In Boats of the Last Crossing (2025), Baran vividly paints the tragedy of African asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea in search of protection, peace and dignified economic opportunities. The painting and those of a similar vein are gripping, to say the least. Under intensely expressive brushstrokes, the cardinal red of these passengers’ lifeboats stands out to our conscience. The title suggests capsizing and an untimely fate. By representing these people and what they must overcome, Baran breaks through the general apathy to make them visible to us.

Massoud Hayoun

• Larkin Durey

Massoud Hayoun is clearly multitalented: former investigative journalist, memoirist, novelist and visual artist. The Master’s Tools (2025) captures much of his mixed heritage (Tunisian, Moroccan, Egyptian and Jewish) and values. The painting invites us to a family ritual, a day where traditional couscous is served at home, a kitchen in which culinary and other domestic operations are overseen by women who crush spice mixtures into a mortar and pestle, dress the beautiful communal couscous dish and embroider. The scene is emotionally potent for North Africans in the diaspora—Hayoun is L.A.-based—as an idealistic image of completeness and belonging. The characters are painted in an entrancing blue like the traditional Tunisian doors or alleyways of Morocco’s town of Chefchaouen. Hayoun also included himself holding a watermelon, a symbol of support toward Palestine, sitting next to a chair where a keffiyeh rests. In this female space where cultural transmission unfolds, he interrogates masculinity and togetherness as well as transnational solidarities.

Ugonna Hosten

• Ed Cross Fine Art

Nigerian-born artist Ugonna Hosten has a knack for the human mind. She studied criminology, which left an inquisitive mark on her artistic practice that blends fine art drawing, collage and printmaking techniques. She’s drawn to the realm of the collective unconscious and how this relates to personal experiences and memory. In The Departure (2025), we find precision and deep sensitivity. The drawing overlays several snapshots of the same day, Hosten’s father’s funeral in their Nigerian home village. Here, we unveil grief, absence and the juxtaposition of traditional beliefs with Christian symbols. The mother’s hair is ceremonially cut among a group of women who will help her navigate this transition from wife to widow. Images are superimposed like double exposure rolls (Hosten revisited the photos taken that day and a decade after the funeral), and they convey the strength of personal archives in understanding the comings and goings of our lives.

Gora M’Bengue

• Tristan Hoare Gallery

While 1-54 primarily caters to contemporary artists and tastes, we sometimes stumble across modern gems thanks to devoted gallerists, and it’s a true delight. This is the case of Tristan Hoare’s presentation of Senegalese artist Gora M’Bengue (1931-1988,) who mastered and revived souwère, a traditional Senegalese technique of reverse glass painting. Lined in punchy vignettes of blues, oranges, yellows and more, sunshine streams through Somerset House. With generous and naïve portraits of everyday women, but also fruits and flowers, M’Bengue narrates his Dakar—instantly charming and irresistibly inviting. For example, Lady in Bedazzled Jewels (1982) has the characteristics of a formal portrait. The woman faces the artist; she crosses her hands over her body and wears her jewelry and coquette dress with pride. But look again and guess the quiet story that is being whispered to us about who she might be.

Buqaqawuli Nobakada

• Affinity

Women picnicking in a sunny, breezy park. Women lazing by the Italian waters of Capri. Women catching up on news and gossip on a designer sofa. They’re sassy, fabulously elegant, bringing an old-time charm to picturesque scenes of pleasure and sorority that might be taken out of a Jane Austen novel. And they’re Black. The gallery has arranged South African artist Buqaqawuli Nobakada’s paintings in a powerful triptych (Mamgcina bought a house in Capri, 3 dangerous lovers and Our dreams began to chase us back, so we had to unpack it—all painted in 2025), which asks us to see race, gender and power head-on. Do these frolicking vignettes seem dreamlike, and if so, why? Luxury is their silent companion. Nobakada’s technique of painting acrylic on lace creates something delicate, unapologetically feminine and quite sexy.

Thando Phenyane

• Eclectica Contemporary

Johannesburg-based Thando Phenyane paints Black Surrealism with verve and maturity. In Saltwater Ceremony I (2025), a young Black character wearing a white mask holds a red rooster, eyes fixated on the viewer. Behind the figure, which is arranged in a no-place, is a balloon decorated with unsettling teeth. In Saltwater Ceremony II (2025), the same figure is standing next to a white rabbit. We encounter here a reconstituted world of eerie fairy tales, menacing shapes, ceremonial accessories and more. It’s a dark Alice in Wonderland meets Remedios Varo with a tight palette of red, white and black. A lot of potential is contained within these works.

Zenaéca Singh

• Guns and Rain

Painting intricate scenes with molasses on embroidered fabric and other materials, Zenaéca Singh explores the complicated legacy of the sugar economy in South Africa. A South African Indian, she depicts vignettes of colonial violence and the lives of indentured South African Indians who were brought by the British to populate and work the sugarcane plantations between 1860 and 1911. Some of her works are more abstract in form, like blotches drawing the outlines of sari-wearing women, while others are more archival in their detailed, darkroom feel. The material—sugar—is core to the work and conversation.

Larissa de Souza

• albertz benda

Brazilian self-taught artist Larissa de Souza infuses her works with Afro-Brazilian folk influences. Her works often paint intergenerational family scenes of domestic rituals, kinship and playfulness. The works included for 1-54 are more symbolic and esoteric. They show two-headed Black feminine figures, on which golden and silver stars have been drawn instead of eyes. Their conjoined neck rises like a volcano, and we guess that they are of the same essence and life force. Duality and complementarity are accentuated by the use of color (blue and gold). Connection with the ocean is emphasized through the inclusion of seashells. The figures are human, yet they hark back to something deeper and sacred. In doing so, de Souza adds to her repository of personal iconography. More of her works will be presented in a New York solo show next year.

Hervé Yamguen

• Afikaris

The sculptures of Cameroonian artist Hervé Yamguen embody metamorphosis. First, by transforming material, bending bronze into unique three-dimensional creations, and second, by exploring the realm of human and non-human forms in his works. Several sculptures from his series “Nous sommes nature” (“We are nature”) are whimsical and strange at the same time. In one, a small framed body, presumably of a boy, rests on the ground. From it grows and emerges bird-like animals, figureheads and plants. Another spiral-shaped sculpture emulates a Tower of Babel with vines coiling all around. Here also, mask-like heads poke through, suggesting the presence of spirits and the intertwined nature of being.