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Arts & Communication Contemporary art from the Global South

improvement when considering exhibitions focused on art a local and an international presence and enables him
and artists from the African Diaspora, as will be discussed to achieve record prices at auction houses in New York,
in more detail below. Despite the challenges posed by the London, and Hong Kong. In 2021, Christie’s New York
global pandemic, the art world has continued to evolve, devoted an online auction to Aboudia, featuring 22 works
with new collectors and buyers emerging from diverse made while on lockdown in his studio in Ivory Coast; all
regions. This has created opportunities for artists from of them sold, and two went for $187,500 each, generating a
historically marginalized communities, leading to greater new record for the artist .
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visibility and recognition.
Amoako Boafo (born in 1984) is a highly acclaimed
3.1.2. A review of the top five artists portrait and figurative painter hailing from Ghana and
now residing in Vienna, Austria. Boafo’s art is exclusively
According to our analysis results, the top five performers devoted to portraying individuals from the African
between 2020 and 2022 are (not necessarily in this order) diaspora, with a focus on Black subjectivity, diversity, and
Aboudia, Amoako Boafo, Igshaan Adams, Oluwole complexity . He challenges representations that objectify
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Omofemi, and Salman Toor (Table 1). We are fascinated and dehumanize Blackness through his use of bold colors
that these artists come from five different countries, four and patterns in his portraits, which celebrate his subjects .
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in Africa and one in South Asia. These artists, like the Boafo’s intimate portraits, painted with his fingers, create
others on our list, achieved record prices at auction, but
they are exceptional because they had the highest number a space for Black joy, subjectivity, and self-determination.
of auction results that at least doubled their estimated Boafo’s meteoric rise in the art market has been noteworthy,
prices between 2020 and 2022, and each one had at least with his works fetching astounding auction prices. Boafo
one painting which reached 5 times the estimated price. is often considered the first artist to have experienced
These impressive results are unique among our data set, so dramatic second-market excitement in a record time
we examine each of these artists briefly. period. In the following section, we will delve into Boafo’s
impact on the contemporary African art market and the
Aboudia (Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, born in 1983) is a shift in collecting artworks from living African artists in
prominent artist originally from Côte d’Ivoire who now the past 2 years.
resides in Brooklyn. He is widely recognized for his vivid
paintings depicting the street culture in his hometown, Igshaan Adams, who was raised in Bonteheuwel,
Abidjan, and his works bear a resemblance to the graffiti- a previously segregated township in Cape Town,
inspired paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat. His artwork South Africa, draws inspiration from his challenging
has been profoundly impacted by the trauma of the surroundings in his artwork. He incorporates cultural and
Ivorian civil war in 2011 and the street art produced in religious references with materials that have always been
Abidjan . While his first European exhibition took place present in his life. His tapestries are stitched together with
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at the Jack Bell Gallery in London in 2011, Galerie Cécile fragments of locally sourced wood, plastic, beads, shells,
Fakhoury showcased his work in conjunction with the string, and rope, all deeply connected to commodity
more established Ivorian painter Fréderic Bruly Bouabré’s trading and local environs in postcolonial Africa. His work
work in their first exhibition in 2012, which paved the way was featured at the 2021 Venice Biennale in “The Milk of
for Aboudia’s local and global recognition. Aboudia’s latest Dreams,” which focused on the desire lines between the
work continues to address the daily hardships and social Bonteheuwel train station in Cape Town and Epping, one
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inequalities in downtown Abidjan. His pieces have been of the city’s industrial neighborhoods . Adams draws from
showcased at several prestigious institutions, including “desire lines,” unplanned paths created as a result of erosion
the Benin Biennial 2012, the Nevada Museum of Art, from foot traffic, to record other types of movement
Galleria Continua (Spheres#7, 2014), the Saatchi Gallery in some of his tapestries, which were used to connect
(Pangaea: New Art from Africa and Latin America, communities that the government wanted to forcibly
London, 2014 – 2015), and Art 21 in Lagos (Chap-Chap, separate during the Apartheid era. His work is supported
2016). Aboudia is now represented by three main galleries: by four main galleries: Stevenson (Cape Town), Casey
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Paris), Ethan Cohen Kaplan (New York), Blank Projects (Cape Town), and AVA
Gallery (New York), and Jack Bell Gallery (London). These Gallery (Cape Town), which organized his solo exhibition
galleries enable him to be exhibited at major art fairs, in 2010. In addition, Adams has participated in numerous
including Art Miami (2021), Art X Lagos (2021), 1-54 in group shows at the Venice Biennale (2022), the Perez Art
London (2020), New York (2021), and Marrakech (2018). Museum Miami (2019), the Minneapolis Institute of Art
The fact of being represented by three galleries located on (2019), the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al
three different continents allows this artist to have both Maaden (MACAAL), and the Seattle Art Museum (2018).

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 5 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1608