Ethiopian-born artist Julie Mehretu re-set her auction record, in a sign of growth for the African art market.
Prices at auctions this year have been shaky, leading to questions about whether there is a market slowdown, but that didn’t stop Julie Mehretu from setting and resetting records.
In October, the Ethiopian-born, US-based painter set a new record for an artist born in Africa when an untitled work from 2021 sold for $9.32 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. It beat the previous record, set by South African artist Marlene Dumas’s The Visitor (1995) in 2008, when it sold for $6.33 million at Sotheby’s London. Then, in November, Mehretu broke her record with a new one: her 2008 work Walkers With the Dawn and the Morning (2008) sold for $10.7 million at Sotheby’s New York.
Mehretu’s records were a sign that the international market for African art was hot this year. That was also evident in October at Sotheby’s London when British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s auction record was reset by her painting Six Birds in the Bush (2015), which sold for $3.6 million—more than $1 million above its estimate.
The spotlight builds on the momentum gained in 2022. A 2023 report by the insurance company Hiscox revealed that Ivory Coast–born Abdoulaye “Aboudia” Diarrassouba was the top-selling artist in 2022, with 75 works sold at auction, beating out Damien Hirst. And an Artprice report issued in March stated that “contemporary African art has become a staple element of the global art market,” with top auction houses working to meet the demand. Hiscox estimated that $63 million was spent on works by artists born in Africa in 2022, compared to $47 million the previous year.
“Collectors continue to have interest because they have [finally] seen that artists from Africa and the diaspora have longevity and are also worth investing in,” said Adora Mba, an adviser specializing in contemporary African art.
This year saw many more African artists, and art became more prominent at exhibitions, museums, fairs, and art spaces, especially on the international stage.
El Anatsui’s commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
In the year’s first quarter, Ghanaian artists Amoako Boafo and Gideon Appah made their New York and London solo debuts at the mega-galleries Gagosian and Pace, respectively. Accra and London-based Gallery 1957 debuted at Frieze Seoul in September, with works on hand by Boafo, Appah, Kwesi Botchway, Ivorian photographer Joana Choumali, Kenyan painter Kaloki Nyamai, and Ethiopian painter Tegene Kunbi. Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk made his Middle East solo debut at Efie Gallery in Dubai that same month. Following the commissioning of his installation in the Dubai Design District, he became the first African artist to display a public sculpture in the city. And in October, El Anatsui’s monumental Hyundai Turbine Hall commission opened at Tate Modern in London, where it remains on view through mid-April.
Market figures like Mba have sought to expand gallery offerings for African art. In November, she curated the exhibition “The Sound of Our Souls” at UTA Artist Space LA, featuring 15 emerging African artists who showed their work for the first time in Los Angeles.
“I wanted to show a variety of artwork and practice as well,” Mba said in a talk with Emmy-nominated Nigerian-American actress Yvonne Orji ahead of the exhibition opening. Mba also said she wanted to “show different aspects of the continent, which is why I didn’t want to just show Ghanaian artists or just Nigerian or South African. I really wanted to… almost represent the whole continent.”
The surge in demand for art from Africa has resulted in more physical spaces being opened on the continent and in the West.
The Lagos- and London-based Tiwani Contemporary announced a “milestone expansion” with a new gallery space at Mayfair in London this year. That space was officially opened in October, continuing the gallery’s “primary mission to represent artists from Africa and its global diaspora.”
In late 2023, South African gallery Goodman opened a new space in New York to raise “awareness of artists who are not represented in the US and platform historical master works by pioneers of 20th Century African art,” according to founder Liza Essers. Around the same time, Cape Town–based Southern Guild announced its expansion to Los Angeles in 2024.
The co-founders of Southern Guild, Julian and Trevyn McGowan, in 2023.
“The partnerships are important with spaces in the West because they provide a much-needed bridge to the African continent,” Mba, founder and director of Accra-based ADA\ Contemporary art gallery, told ARTnews. “It allows collectors to view and appreciate art from countries outside [where] they reside and opens up their curiosity to the variety of art forms being practiced that they perhaps never saw or knew.”
In the last quarter of this year, two new galleries were launched in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, adding to the growing number of spaces nurturing art scenes on the continent.
An eponymous gallery from African art specialist and collector Farah Fakhri opened in the Ivorian city of Abidjan in late 2023 to support and showcase emerging and established artists from Africa and its diaspora. In early September, Bwo Art Gallery was launched in Douala, Cameroon.
The goal of Bwo is to bridge “the artistic gap between African artists in Africa and its diaspora, those in Cameroon and the broader Central Africa region with the rest of the world,” cofounder Noelle Mukete-Elhalaby told ARTnews in a recent interview. “Our distinctive approach resonates well with Cameroonians [and] has brought enthusiasm within the local art scene. Our fellow Cameroonians are not only embracing the art but are also creating and joining discussions that contribute to our cultural heritage.”
“I think that there’s a window here that we kind of seized with everything that is happening in the art market,” Brice Yonkeu, the gallery’s other cofounder said, adding that Bwo brings “more diversity or perspective” to the conversations about contemporary art from the African continent, which he estimates are largely centered around English-speaking countries.
Yonkeu believes spaces like Bwo will help cultivate a new crop of local collectors: “A place like Cameroon is complex but also an interesting country,” he said. “We have so many entrepreneurs and people who have the possibility to collect, but because historically we’ve been deprived of cultural institutions and art galleries, some of them never really had the opportunity to build up that skill of appreciating art or developing that taste of appreciating art.”
Ultimately, Mukete-Elhalaby thinks that all of the moments this year show “support and an increase in recognition for African art” while noting that it provides opportunities for stakeholders, including artists, gallerists and collectors, to continue growing the continent’s art market.
“Despite what some people might have said—that it’s a trend and it will die down at some point—I think there’s a confirmation that there’s definitely strong interest,” Yonkeu added.