1-54 Contemporary Art Fair Marrekech 2026
The Surface as a Space of Relation
The selection presented by the gallery at 1-54 Marrakech brings together artists whose practices consider the surface not as a mere support, but as an active space of relation, memory, and resistance. Painting, textile, and hybrid practices are approached as fully fledged languages, capable of making visible the forms of coexistence, vulnerability, and transformation that shape the contemporary world.
At the heart of this proposal, the work of Samuel Nnorom unfolds a structuring reflection on the social fabric. Drawing on reclaimed Ankara textiles that are knotted, stitched, and assembled into globular volumes, the artist composes dense sculptural landscapes made of closed units evoking relational bubbles. These forms, both organic and systemic, operate as metaphors for contemporary social spheres. They function as spaces of protection as much as of isolation, and as sites where visibility and concealment, truth and fragmented narratives are continuously negotiated. The repetition of gesture, the patient accumulation of modules, and the historical charge of the textile inscribe time, memory, and the circulation of narratives at the very core of the material.
The work of Ange Dakouo extends this reflection through a more meditative and reparative approach to the surface. Using newspaper, cardboard, and thread, the artist creates modular works composed of assembled amulets and talismans, where each unit symbolises an individual and the whole embodies a community. The apparent fragility of the materials contrasts with the solidity of the collective form, asserting vulnerability as a condition of solidarity. Chromatic variations from black to red, then to white, trace a symbolic journey from turbulence to plenitude. The work thus becomes a space of protection, memory, and shared hope.
With Adjei Tawiah, the pictorial surface becomes a site of embodiment. Through the distinctive use of the sponge as a painting tool, the artist builds portraits in which matter accumulates, presses, and stratifies, lending the figures an almost sculptural presence. The face is never a mere appearance. It becomes a sensitive surface upon which layers of history, experience, and identity in formation are deposited. In contrast to the fluidity of digital imagery, Tawiah’s painting asserts a pronounced physicality and situates the human figure in a fertile tension between interiority and the external world.
Finally, Aidan Marak (Nadia Karam) engages the surface as a space of speech and political friction. Through works combining painting, collage, and textual fragments, she confronts the viewer with an accumulation of signs that disrupt immediate legibility. Language appears fragmented and at times obstructed, revealing tensions between expression and censorship, visibility and erasure. The female figure, central to her practice, becomes a point of resistance and carries contemporary concerns related to freedom of expression and emerging African feminisms.
Brought together within the booth space, these works trace a constellation of relational practices in which the surface acts as a site of contact, negotiation, and transformation. Together, they propose a vision of contemporary African art that understands materiality as a living language, capable of rendering visible the bonds, fractures, and potential recompositions of reality. Far from any essentialisation, this selection affirms art as a space of sensitive dialogue, where fragility becomes strength and form becomes a site of coexistence.
