The sluggish days and the timid February sun here in Stockholm had me feeling fed up and whiney. Different year, same blues.

So as a matter of course, I went onto Instagram intending to numb out. Only that didn’t happen because what came across my feed had me calling my partner, instructing him to get home from Falun. The ancestors had spoken! I was off to Morocco within 48 hours, off to the 1-54 Art Fair.

I have been following 1-54 online since its inception in 2013. What caught my attention was that all the art and artists represented were from Africa and its diaspora. What’s more, Touria El Glaoui, the founding director, had single-handedly secured funding, sponsorships, and grant writing to get the whole thing off the ground. My kinda person!

Now 1-54 is one of the leading art fairs, and judging by my soul-full experience during the weekend of 10-12 February, I can see why.

Everything about this fair, though apparently small compared to London and New York, was lavish. It felt like a banquet. The breadth of the art certainly reflected the fair’s name. 1 continent, 54 countries, and the depth of the work embodied a rich expanse in which specific topics were explored.

Take Ana Silva’s work, for example. Ana Silva is from Angola, and her meticulous embroidery on raffia bags spoke to me of loss, memories, and perhaps the need to bestow a sense of dignity whilst still managing to maintain hope. There was a deeply sensitive practicality to the work which moved me.

And then there were Gopal Dagnogo’s captivating paintings, full of vibrancy and engagement, which had me glued for more than an hour. The chickens, fishes, and everyday grocery items like the cans of Heinz Beans and Gordon’s gin had me laughing. Something about that and the brush strokes reminded me of my life in Cape Town, growing up by the sea.

But there was more there. In fact, I had to go back the next day because I could not get his paintings off my mind. It was the “Roman” feet. Those feet felt out of place. It made his still-life paintings feel everything but still to me. After a conversation with the gallerist, she explained that his work had much to do with the political situation in the Ivory Coast, Dagnogo’s home country.

I could go on and on about so many art pieces that touched me, including the work by Amina Agueznay with her wool and palm fibre weaves, Abdulrazaq Awofeso with his sculptural portraits in pallet boards, Nú Barreto with his mixed media narratives, Rachel Marsil with her acrylic paintings, Reggie Khumalo with his prominent paintings honouring women and Ambrose Rhapsody Murray with their cyanotype on silk.

As I said, a banquet that filled me. Someone gushed that being there felt like therapy. Yes, totally! Besides the art, the conversations between the artists, gallerists, and visitors did it for me.

My soul felt nourished, and I was ready to return to my studio again, inspired!