As the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returned to Marrakech, this year’s edition felt distinctly future-facing. Alongside established names such as Adama Sylla, Alex Burke and Stanley Wany, the fair spotlighted a new generation of artists through the Prix Mustaqbal, the foundation’s emerging contemporary art prize and accompanying special exhibition, foregrounding practices rooted in memory and material experimentation – from Yasmine Hadni’s intimate reworkings of family photographs and Inès Abergel’s performative sculptures shaped by the body in motion, to Louisa Ben’s portraits of diasporic girlhood. Together, these artists show the range of ideas and political concerns shaping contemporary African and diasporic art. Here, we highlight six names from this year’s fair that we can’t stop thinking about.

CAROLINE DOUVILLE 

Caroline Douville is a Montréal-based visual artist working across painting, drawing, and installation. Drawing on her Haitian heritage, her practice interrogates how Haitian spiritual traditions, particularly Vodou and the figure of the zombie, have been distorted and appropriated in Western culture. Central to her work is the reclamation of historical imagery from Haiti. She sources photographs and archival materials from national archives, anthropological records and literary texts, recontextualising them through processes of image transfer and airbrush painting. By layering the historic images with contemporary techniques, Douville questions how digital media shape diasporic perceptions of their homeland. 

LOUISA BEN 

Working primarily with portraiture, Louisa Ben is a Paris-based photographer exploring questions of identity and belonging. Her practice centres on long-term documentary projects that examine geographical memory and the ways personal and collective histories shape one’s sense of self. Her series MP#02 explores her Moroccan heritage and challenges fixed ideas of nationality and territory through portraits of young women whose origins are unspecified. In Yelli, she combines autobiographical and documentary approaches to reflect the experiences of a generation navigating life between different places.

YASMINE HADNI 

Born in Rabat, Morocco, Yasmine Hadni is a Casablanca-based artist whose work draws on family photo archives, recontextualising them through painted compositions that blend memory, fiction and social observation. Hadni’s practice (which also incorporates video, drawing, sound and printmaking) explores emotional and social dynamics within Moroccan bourgeois families, using childhood as a recurring conceptual lens. 

INÉS ABERGEL 

Inés Abergel is a sculptor working with clay, marble, metal, and mud to investigate the body, identity and transformation. Her practice, which she describes as “performative sculpture”, creates forms that emerge through the gestures of her body, blending human, animal, and organic shapes. Drawing on her training in contemporary dance, Abergel emphasises movement and the interaction between body and material, producing shapes that invite viewers to reflect on their own bodily experience. She carefully builds and carves her materials, using the process itself to explore change and presence. 

SARA BENABDALLAH 

Using photography and film, Sara Benabdallah explores how tradition, modernity, and women’s roles shape Moroccan culture. Born in Marrakech, she grew up surrounded by artisans and builders, an experience that heavily influences her practice. She works closely with local craftsmen and incorporates traditional techniques and patterns in her work, especially in the creation of her frames. Her work investigates pressures on women, marriage expectations, and the ways they reclaim agency. Through her practice, she aims to challenge conventions and rethink femininity while honouring her heritage.

SPECIAL MENTION: STATUES ALSO BREATH BY STUDENTS FROM OBAFEMI-AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY, NIGERIA 

Statues Also Breathe is a collaborative project by Prune Nourry, the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Obafemi-Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and the families of the 276 girls abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok in 2014. Nourry was entrusted with portraits of the missing girls and recreated their faces as eight clay heads inspired by the sacred Ile-Ife terracotta and bronze sculptures of Yoruba rulers. Using the originals as moulds, Nigerian craftswomen and university students produced 108 heads, transforming each sculpture into a unique work. The resulting “army” of girls was first exhibited at Art Twenty One in Lagos in 2022, accompanied by a documentary film by Vincent Lorca and Chioma Onyenwe.