Works | 1-54 LONDON

FOR THIS YEAR’S LONDON EDITION OF THE FAIR, AFIKARIS PROPOSES A BOOTH WHERE MATERIAL EXPERIMENTATION BECOMES A VEHICLE FOR EXPLORING SPIRITUAL AND CULTURAL NARRATIVES. THROUGH SMOKE, FIBRE, CLAY, BRONZE AND PASTEL, THE ARTISTS TRANSLATE INTANGIBLE SYSTEMS OF BELIEF INTO POWERFUL VISUAL FORMS.

Géraldine Tobe’s works emerge from deeply personal and collective histories of spirituality in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After burning her canvases early in her career, she began painting with the smoke of an oil lamp, transforming fire and soot into drawing tools. This process becomes a ritual act that connects the visible world to the invisible realm of spirits. Her compositions often depict fragmented bodies, dancing figures and African masks, reflecting the tensions between ancestral cosmologies and Christian doctrines imposed during the colonial period. Through smoke, Tobe creates symbolic images that evoke trauma, exorcism and resilience, positioning art as a spiritual space of healing.

Mathew Eguavoen work is deeply rooted in the symbolism of laamb. The wrestlers, adorned in traditional attire, their bodies glistening with sacred earth, embody both physical and spiritual strength. The arena becomes a microcosm of the world stage, where Africans fight to assert their place, dignity, and humanity. Each piece in this series captures the tension, movement, and energy of the fight, but also the quiet moments of preparation, reflection, and community that surround it. These moments remind us that the fight is not solitary; it is collective, intergenerational, and deeply connected to the land, culture, and history that sustain it.

Eva Obodo’s sculptural reliefs and installations are constructed through acts of wrapping, tying and bundling charcoal and fibre. These gestures echo ritual practices of binding and weaving found across many cultures, while simultaneously referencing economic and ecological systems tied to resource extraction. Charcoal, produced through burning, evokes both transformation and depletion, pointing to Nigeria’s environmental and industrial histories. His works operate as metaphors for interconnected human networks: communities, trade routes and cultural exchanges. In this sense, Obodo transforms humble materials into symbolic structures that render visible the invisible threads binding individuals to collective histories.

Ozioma Onuzulike approaches clay not merely as a medium but as a symbolic substance deeply embedded in African cosmologies. His works often consist of accumulations of small units created through repetitive processes: pounding, crushing, wedging and firing. These gestures recall both craft traditions and ritual acts of transformation. Clay embodies the tension between fragility and permanence. His work suggests that the material itself carries cultural memory, functioning as an archive of histories shaped by political upheaval, economic struggle and resilience.

Nasreddine Bennacer’s paintings evoke the legendary gardens of Babylon, often associated with the ancient myth of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Rather than reconstructing historical architecture, he embraces ambiguity: fragments of columns and ruins dissolve into lush vegetation rendered through dramatic chiaroscuro. In these dreamlike landscapes, myth becomes more powerful than historical proof. The imagined gardens symbolize humanity’s enduring desire for harmony and beauty, even amid contemporary conflict in regions historically linked to Mesopotamian civilization. Bennacer’s works thus operate as poetic spaces where myth bridges past and present.

Hervé Yamguen’s bronze sculptures depict hybrid figures that merge human, animal and plant forms. These metamorphic beings echo mythological traditions in which the boundaries between species dissolve, suggesting a cosmology in which all forms of life are interconnected. His practice, shaped by decades of interdisciplinary experimentation in visual art, writing and performance, invites viewers to contemplate a broader ecological and spiritual unity. The sculptures embody symbolic transformations, celebrating the vitality and beauty of existence while proposing a worldview rooted in wonder and coexistence.

Through his multi-dimensional works, Mouhcine Rahaoui offers an immersion into the layered memory of the miners that has shaped Jerada, his hometown. The stories, gestures, and testimonies inherited from his father, a former miner, and from his community have left a profound imprint on his visual practice. Rahaoui transforms these memories into matter, reincarnating the mine through coal, rope, wax, candles, and fragments of everyday life. Through abstraction, the Moroccan artist does not simply represent the mine; he excavates its memory, allowing the presence of those who worked—and continue to work—within it to linger, haunt, and inhabit the materiality of his work.

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AFIKARIS Gallery

Booth E16

15 -18 October, 2026

Somerset House

Strand, London WC2R 1LA