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Being “African” in the so-called “Middle East”: Curating our Multiple Selves with Touria El Glaoui, Dr. Omar Kholeif and Dr. Ridha Moumni.  How does one define one’s sense of ‘African-ness’ in an age where slippages around both language and its comprehension; visuality and its contradictions, are no longer subject to the binary of a singular form of identarian position or politics. In this series of stories and provocations, speakers reflect on the evolving definition of African legacies and heritage and consider the contradictions that arise when a creative individual occupies more than a single identity.  https://www.1-54.com/

The Poetry Salon: (My) Episodes of Everyday Racism, Interrupted with Raymond Antrobus, Phoebe Boswell, Lakwena Maciver, Andra Simons, and Dr. O. Drawing inspiration in-part from Grada Kilomba’s book, Plantation Memories, and Lola Olufemi’s Feminism, Interrupted, the FORUM’s second edition of the poetry salon invites artists and writers to present and reflect on poems that disrupt and challenge the very concept of ‘everyday racism’. The mask, the mouth, and the wound are expressed and amplified from the interstices of silence — not marginal, but rather, enabling new centres of reclaimed imagination to come to bear. Merging oral testimony, with the diaristic, the meditative, and the propulsive — the readings are followed by a group discussion of lived experience, and the power of ‘interruption’ facilitated through the singularity of the voice.  https://www.1-54.com/

Introduction & Exhibition Itineraries with Dr. ‘Ugochukwu-Smooth’ Nzewi and Dr. Omar Kholeif ‘Ugochukwu-Smooth’ Nzewi is an artist, art historian, and curator who currently serves as the inaugural Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Both trained as artists, Nzewi and Kholeif, take a winding path through the exhibition halls of memory, reflecting on the projects that inspired and gave route to formative trajectories, such as the Dak’Art Biennial in Senegal, through to the art spaces, that nourished and inspired them — from Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. In this conversation, the duo negotiates the tension between the notion of ‘tradition’ in art history against the accumulated concept of the contemporary. They consider the ethnographic and the anthropological in a dialogue that summons individual ways of looking and narrating art of Africa and its diasporas.  https://www.1-54.com/

Ageing Ruins…: A Listening Session with Otobong Nkanga and a response by Dr. O. Otobong Nkanga, one of the leading artistic voices of her generation, returns to FORUM to present four tracks from her forthcoming vinyl record release, developed from her award-winning installation, ‘Ageing Ruins Dreaming Only to Recall the Hard Chisel from the Past,’ at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, commissioned as part of Sharjah Biennial 14. Here, audiences are invited to an intimate evocation that explores the use of the artist’s voice within her practice, proffering possibilities and questions about the multiple forms of imagination that can be conjured through this form of embodiment. Here, the duo discusses the voice in relation to the body as a site contingency with its natural surroundings — the environment, which is forever transmuting, seeping through our hands, as much as it is responding to the contours of our hands. A discussion with the audience will follow.  https://www.1-54.com/

Narrating our “Pan-Afrikan” Connections: Claudette Johnson and Marlene Smith in-dialogue with Lubaina Himid Marlene Smith is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator recognised for her research on Black Artists and Modernism in the UK. Claudette Johnson, known for her large-scale figurative drawings, are acknowledged for their ‘defiant’ contribution to the study of Black visuality. Both Claudette Johnson and Marlene Smith were co-founders of the East-Midlands based, BLK Group formed in Wolverhampton in 1979, setting the stage for the anti-racist discourse of the British Black arts movement, which would follow the early 1980s. Lubaina Himid is an artist, who spent much of her life working to create space for herself and other Black women in the UK’s artistic ecosystem, simultaneously operating as a curator, cultural historian, and as an educator. Here, she speaks to Marlene Smith and Claudette Johnson about the complexities of negotiating one’s individual artistic practice, while also giving credence to the effective power of collective movement and action in shaping and nuancing our multiple histories of art. The panel draws its title from an exhibition held at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in 1983.  https://www.1-54.com/

Intro to FORUM & Overture Number 2/A Re-Play: Koyo Kouoh: The Curator as Storyteller with Dr. Omar Kholeif Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director, and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town and Founding Director of RAW Materials Company in Dakar, in conversation with Kholeif, narrates a path — as a storyteller who weaves and builds upon the intimacies of human relationships. Here, Kouoh, leads, guides, and enables us through her commitment to a nurturing curatorial practice of multiple convenings with artists and curators. How did this all begin, and where to from here, for Koyo Kouoh? The path may not always have been traditional, perhaps even thorny, but Koyo has utilised divergent routes to construct pavements for African artists, authors, historians, and curators to be seen. What shall, and can we do together? In this talk, curator Kholeif, invites Koyo to walk down lanes of memory, to a beginning — tracing itineraries, developing maps, and building worlds, which might offer audiences an inventory for how to consider art in the present.  https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022 May 21-22, 2022 (22/05/2022) Interlocking Histories (4:00 pm EST) Two new exhibitions opening in October 2022 examine the engagement of African and African American artists creating new art in the 1940s through the 60s, that fostered transnational conversations and upended notions of modernity depicted by African artists. Kimberli Gant, PhD, co-curator of Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club, and moderator Niama Safia Sandy will discuss and preview some of the featured art, and illuminate this time in art history. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022  May 21-22, 2022 (22/05/2022) Archiving, Reclamation, and Authoring Your History (2:00 pm EST) The renaissance of archival resources and collections that center global Black experiences has fostered an appetite for a better understanding of how we define archives and how archival collections can be employed in the cultural arts. Whose narratives do the archives hold and what is missing? Should artists think about the archive as a mode of legacy building? Steven G. Fullwood (Nomadic Archivist Project), ceramicist King Houndekpinkou, Rianna Jade Parker (Brief History of Black British Art), and moderator Novella Ford are storytellers, archivists, researchers, and artists who will engage these questions and share their journeys to and through archives. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022 May 21-22, 2022 (21/05/2022) Textiles and the Global Politic of the Black Arts Movement (4:00pm EST) A conversation with Harlem-born fiber artist Dindga McCannon and art collector and gallerist Lewis Long will explore the influence of McCannon’s Harlem upbringing, the politics that gave way to the creation of the Weusi Artist Collective and Where We At Black Women Artists Inc., and the enduring use of textiles in artmaking today. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 FORUM New York 2022 May 21-22, 2022 (21/05/2022) Under the Influence of Édouard Glissant (1:00pm EST) Martinican poet, novelist, philosopher, and academic, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), is considered one of the greatest writers and thinkers of his generation. What can the theories and writings of Glissant help us to understand about navigating and preserving cultural complexities? How can they operate in artmaking, criticism, and artists serving spaces? Tiana Webb Evans, art maven, brand strategist, and founder of The Jamaica Art Society, with artist Johanna Mirabel, will consider and reconsider these questions and explore Mirabel’s work in this context. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris 7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022) Closing Remarks - Motorised Justice: A Poem for the Drifters 1-54 Forum Curator Dr Omar Kholeif closes the day with a lyric poem authored during the course of the Fair and Forum https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris 7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022) FOCUS: Zina Saro-Wiwa followed by an in-person Q&A with Professor Sarah Perks(14:45 pm – 16:15 pm CET) Esteemed artist and filmmaker, Zina Saro-Wiwa, presents a specially curated screening and in-person conversation on her film and video work, including a special preview of an in-development epic feature. From founding the alt-Nollywood movement to a near-mystical obsession with food and drink, Saro-Wiwa’s oeuvre is characterised by storytelling that expands beyond belief systems, producing unique visual encounters that cross geographical, cultural, and metaphysical space. Saro-Wiwa’s films and video installations combine personal and collective emotion with pop culture, reworking global historical cinematic genres from melodrama and sci-fi to biblical epic in order to consider legacies of trauma, historical memory, and the otherworldly potential to transcend them. Here, Saro-Wiwa shares existing works including the influential cult-classic Phyllis (2010), The Deliverance of Comfort (2010), and her acclaimed Table Manners series (2014-2019), alongside the inspiration, ideas, and extracts for a new feature-length work, Eucharia. The session will be moderated by curator and film producer, Professor Sarah Perks, who has a long-standing interest in the artist’s work. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris 7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022) Have We Ever Been Modern? Joël Andrianomearisoa Christine Eyene Marie-Cécile Zinsou Moderator: Marie-Ann Yemsi How do we negotiate the tension between the notion of old and new; the ‘traditional’ and the contemporary culture produced on the African continent and its diaspora today? Rather than retreating into debates of semantics, this conversation seeks to create a propositional sphere, where social justice is not merely an aspiration but a way of collaboratively thinking through the different means that solidarity around African art can be made manifest. Whether deliberating restitution or the framing of our present discourses of contemporary art, this session seeks to move us beyond the debate of western notions of modernity, in favour of a dichotomous and rapturous sphere of constant dissonance. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris 7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022) Painting a New Expressionism: A Keynote conversation between artist, Anuar Khalifi and Dr Omar Kholeif (11:45 am – 12:45 pm CET) One of the most exciting artists working in painting to emerge onto the international scene in recent memory, Anuar Khalifi, who splits his time between Barcelona and Tangier, was the subject of several exhibitions during the global lockdowns associated with Covid-19. Now, in a significant keynote conversation with Dr. Omar Kholeif, the artist takes us through the evolution of his stylistic forms and motifs, from his early pursuits of drawing as a child through to his recent collaboration with artist and musician, Yasiin Bey, AyYa. In their conversation, the duo traces their parallel lives living in multiple diasporas and their broad interests in expanding arts potential to be inclusive of the tensions of being from and of the Global South. They address the stylistic burdens of Orientalism versus modernity and explore the possibilities of pushing these formal limits. They ask: How should one express oneself in the freewheeling 21st century? https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum Paris 7 - 10 April 2022 (09/04/2022) Opening Remarks / A Memento to Marrakech (11:00 am – 11:15 am CET) Forum Curator Dr Omar Kholeif introduces 1-54 Forum Paris. Enter the Frame with Hassan Hajjaj (Video Address and Conversation, 11:15 am – 11:45 am CET) 1-54 Forum begins by reflecting on the complex cultural constellations of Marrakech, Morocco, a site where the 1-54 Forum and Fair has for the second time been moved due to the evolving contours of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Audiences are invited to Enter the Frame of the Day in a special trans-border conversation with the polymath, Hassan Hajjaj. An Andy Warhol for the 21st Century, artist Hajjaj demystifies Morocco’s cliches, immersing us into the heart of the city’s Medina and revealing new work in progress in a conversation with Forum Curator, Dr Kholeif. https://www.1-54.com/

1-54 Forum London 2021 14 - 17 October In the Last Days of the City Q&A A Q&A with the film’s director Tamer El Said and the film’s star Khalid Abdalla led by Dr. Omar Kholeif. In the Last Days of the City, Tamer El Said’s ambitious debut feature, tells the fictional story of a filmmaker from downtown Cairo played by Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, United 93, Green Zone, The Square) as he struggles to capture the soul of a city on edge while facing loss in his own life. Shot in Cairo, Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin during the two years before the outbreak of revolution in Egypt, the film’s multi-layered stories are a visually rich exploration of friendship, loneliness and life in cities shaped by the shadows of war and adversity. AWARDS Caligari Film Prize at Berlinale Critics Award for Best Arab Film in 2016, Arab Cinema Center  Grand Prix of New Horizons International Film Festival Grand Prix of Festival des 3 Continents, Nantes Best Film, San Francisco Arab Film Festival, USA, 2016  Best Director at Buenos Aires International Film festival (BAFICI) www.1-54.com

1-54 Forum London 2021 14 - 17 October The Walk Towards the Future (French) This open-ended conversation explores the concept of artist as philanthropist; the artist as the maker and progenitor of institutions, and the diverse ways that they approach this aspect of their practice. Is institutionalism a form of artistic practice? Or rather, is it a by-product of a hollowed vacuum that requires re-imagining, regenerating? How do these engines fuel a vision for a collective future? How do we sustain them and enliven them with the potential tools required to sustain their existence? Dr. Omar Kholeif leads a conversation with artists Michael Armitage, Bill Kouélany, and Otobong Nkanga. In partnership with Phaidon to celebrate the publication of 'African Artists.' Available for purchase on phaidon.com. Save 20% using PHAIDON20. www.1-54.com

1-54 Forum London 2021 14 - 17 October The Walk Towards the Future (English) This open-ended conversation explores the concept of artist as philanthropist; the artist as the maker and progenitor of institutions, and the diverse ways that they approach this aspect of their practice. Is institutionalism a form of artistic practice? Or rather, is it a by-product of a hollowed vacuum that requires re-imagining, regenerating? How do these engines fuel a vision for a collective future? How do we sustain them and enliven them with the potential tools required to sustain their existence? Dr. Omar Kholeif leads a conversation with artists Michael Armitage, Bill Kouélany, and Otobong Nkanga. In partnership with Phaidon to celebrate the publication of 'African Artists.' Available for purchase on phaidon.com. Save 20% using PHAIDON20. www.1-54.com

1-54 Forum London 2021 14 - 17 October The Poetry Salon: On Fragile Ground In this curated poetry salon, five artists-writers present a collective dreamscape. Newly commissioned pieces of lyric, poem and song exploring themes of environmental justice will converge in myriad life-like forms—the drift resuscitated. Join Anaïs Duplan, Lubaina Himid CBE RA, Isaiah A. Hines, Dr. Omar Kholeif and Otobong Nkanga. www.1-54.com

1-54 Forum London 14 - 17 October 2021 A History of Echoes Amidst this symphony of voices: curators, artists and creative collaborators discuss the exhibitions fashioned from the imagination of the late Nigerian curator, Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019). By exploring the sediments of the past, the collective voices herein sketch out a path for listeners to imagine an alternative possible future—one that is inclusive of the dissonant voices and identities, which make up our shared world. Hoor Al Qasimi (President and Director, Sharjah Art Foundation and President, The Africa Institute, Sharjah) leads a conversation with Jo-Anne Birnie-Danzker (former Director, Villa Stuck; Vancouver Art Gallery; Frye Art Museum and Biennale of Sydney), Godfried Donkor(Artist, Gallery 1957) and Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Artists). www.1-54.com