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The African Art Hub (TAAH) opens its 2026 programme with a focused presentation at the London Art Fair, marking a decisive step in the gallery’s international development and curatorial trajectory. The presentation signals TAAH’s continued commitment to contemporary art practices shaped by transnational experience, diasporic identity and cultural collaboration across the Global South.
Ayogu Kingsley Titled Uncontextualised Souths, the exhibition brings together the practices of Alessandra Risi, Ayogu Kingsley and Kay Gasei. Rather than positioning geography as an explanatory framework, the presentation foregrounds painting as a site of complexity, where narratives remain fluid and meaning resists resolution. The works operate through layered readings, inviting sustained attention rather than immediate legibility.
At London Art Fair 2026, The African Art Hub presents works by Alessandra Risi and Kay Gasei, whose practices are grounded in painting yet markedly distinct in approach. Both artists construct visual languages that reward slow, sensorial engagement, allowing images to unfold through texture, gesture and association.
Risi’s work is shaped by processes of appropriation and reconfiguration, using decontextualisation as a method rather than a provocation. Drawing on her experience as a Latin American woman from Peru with European ancestry, her paintings weave personal and cultural references without anchoring them to fixed interpretative systems. As she states, “The painting becomes an extension of my own body, refl ecting inner, environmental, and cultural conditions.” Her canvases remain deliberately open, resisting codification while holding traces of memory and displacement.
Kay Gasei Gasei, raised in London and of Zambian heritage, approaches painting as a space where myth, history and personal narrative intersect. His works are tactile and exploratory, rooted in storytelling yet intentionally autonomous from imposed context. Reflecting on the works included in the presentation, he notes, “The four pieces included here are more personal exercises in technique and execution merging with idea than fi nal works in themselves.” The paintings privilege process over conclusion, offering glimpses into evolving modes of thought rather than definitive statements.
Alessandra RisiAcross the exhibition, painting functions as a site of convergence for the personal, the cultural and the imagined. The works do not seek to clarify identity or geography but instead hold ambiguity as a productive condition. Meaning emerges through affect, memory and association, shaped as much by the viewer’s encounter as by the artist’s intent.
Uncontextualised Souths proposes a view of the Global South that refuses simplification. It is not presented as a category to be decoded, but as a constellation of lived experiences and artistic practices that exist on their own terms. Through this London Art Fair presentation, The African Art Hub affirms an evolving curatorial vision, one that challenges singular readings of contemporary art and expands how global artistic production is understood within an international context.
©2026 The African Art Hub
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