There are art fairs, and then there is AKAA. Since its inception a decade ago, Also Known As Africa has occupied a singular position within the international contemporary art calendar, operating as a genuine cultural force that has consistently championed artists, galvanised collectors, and reshaped how contemporary African artistic creation is understood and valued. As Paris Art Week descends upon the French capital this autumn, AKAA returns for its 11th edition with unmistakable ambition.
Running from 23 to 25 October 2026 beneath the glass canopy of the Carreau du Temple in Paris’s 3rd arrondissement, this year’s edition arrives with two distinct focal points: a sweeping celebration of photography, timed to the bicentenary of the medium’s invention, and a dedicated exhibition programme exploring works on paper. Together, these twin pillars promise an edition of considerable depth.
A Decade Of Influence: How AKAA Became A Cornerstone Of The Contemporary African Art Market
To understand what this 11th edition means, it helps to appreciate how profoundly AKAA has transformed the territory it inhabits. Over the past ten years, the fair has supported the emergence of artists who have since become prominent figures both within African artistic circles and on the international stage. It has done so not through spectacle alone, but through curatorial integrity and long-term relationship-building with artists, galleries, and institutions across continents.
The evolution of the fair mirrors the growing maturity of the contemporary African art market itself, a sector that has witnessed the continual expansion of its global collector base and the increasing recognition of the artists it champions. What was once a niche preoccupation for a small circle of specialists has become one of the most dynamic fields in the broader art world, and AKAA has been central to driving that shift. This momentum is visible across the international auction and exhibition landscape, from Krishen Khanna’s Bandwallas arriving in London for a private selling exhibition at AstaGuru’s new galleries to major institutional surveys around the globe.
Under the artistic direction of Sitor Senghor, the fair continues to encourage what it describes as a rigorous and dynamic dialogue among artists, galleries, collectors, curators, and institutions. The approach is deliberately expansive, pushing the renewal of narratives, approaches, and critical discourses surrounding contemporary African and Afro-descendant artistic practices, while remaining grounded in the real and the immediate.
The Art Of Seeing: Photography At Two Hundred Years
For its 2026 edition, AKAA places photography at the heart of its programme, a choice that feels simultaneously timely and urgent. The bicentenary of photography’s invention offers a natural moment of reflection, but Sitor Senghor‘s curatorial vision extends far beyond anniversary commemoration. In his editorial, the artistic director frames the celebration of photography as an invitation to reconsider the very act of looking.
“Never before have we lived amid such an abundance of images,” Senghor writes. “They cascade endlessly across our screens, capturing our attention, shaping our perceptions, seducing, informing, and at times deceiving us. Real or fabricated, retouched or generated, they contribute to a visual landscape in which the boundary between reality and representation grows increasingly porous.”
It is a diagnosis that will resonate with anyone who has scrolled through an endless feed of algorithmically curated imagery, feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and somehow unsatisfied. Senghor’s response, to turn towards Africa and its diasporas as, in his words, “inexhaustible reservoirs of imagination, memory, and vision,” is both a creative choice and a philosophical statement.
“Photography continues to possess a rare and precious power: the power to transform our perception,” he writes. “Behind every image lies a world. Behind every gaze, a story. And within the beauty that traverses these works , whether radiant or discreet , resides the possibility of a deeper understanding: of others, of ourselves, and of the many realities that connect us.”
This philosophical underpinning informs the entire AKAA Photo section of the fair, which brings together galleries and artists working at the forefront of contemporary photographic practice. From Fisheye Gallery’s presentation of Delphine Diallo to the powerful work of Zanele Muholi, presented by Galerie Carole Kvasnevski, and the atmospheric photography of Senegalese artist Gabriel Dia through Arts Design Africa Studio, the range on offer spans continents, generations, and approaches. Paul Kodjo‘s striking black-and-white images of urban Côte d’Ivoire, courtesy of in camera galerie, sit alongside the conceptually rich work of Dagmar Van Weeghel, presented by Lisbon’s THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE, a juxtaposition that speaks to AKAA’s commitment to genuine international dialogue rather than geographical tokenism. The South African photographer Zanele Muholi, whose visual activism has earned global institutional recognition, is among the most anticipated presences in this year’s photographic programme.
Mother’s Heritage: Gabriel Dia’s Monumental Installation
At the physical and emotional heart of this year’s fair stands a Monumental Installation by Senegalese photographer Gabriel Dia, centred on his series Mother’s Heritage. Born in 1985 in Rufisque, Senegal, Dia has developed a practice that sits at a rare and affecting intersection of personal autobiography and broader cultural commentary.
The installation unfolds through a series of large-scale photographs printed on fabric and suspended throughout the Carreau du Temple’s dramatic interior space. The scenography is inspired by the artist’s childhood memories, evoking garments hanging from clotheslines and transforming each image into a fragment of memory suspended between presence and remembrance.
The series finds its origins in an intimate and specifically personal source: the traditional garments created by Dia’s mother in her sewing workshop in Senegal. Revisiting these fabrics, patterns, and silhouettes several decades on, the artist engages in a sensitive reflection on family history, the social constructions of gender, and the cultural inheritances that continue to shape contemporary identities. He also celebrates the aesthetic and symbolic richness of African textiles and the craftsmanship associated with them, both of which are increasingly threatened by the growing standardisation of clothing practices and global fashion trends.
The result is a work in which, as the fair’s materials note, “the intimate becomes political,” an installation that invites visitors to reconsider notions of transmission, belonging, and cultural heritage with fresh eyes and genuine emotional engagement.
Histoires De Papiers: Celebrating The Art Of Works On Paper
Alongside its photographic focus, AKAA 2026 dedicates its annual medium spotlight to works on paper, under the title Histoires de Papiers. Following last year’s focus on ceramics, this year’s choice reflects a growing critical and commercial momentum behind the medium within contemporary African and Afro-descendant artistic practice.
Sitor Senghor‘s curatorial note positions paper as a medium with its own distinct expressive power, far from secondary or preparatory. “Paper is far more than a support for sketches or preparatory studies,” he writes. “It is often the site of first intuitions, where ideas take shape in their most immediate form and where emotion is captured with remarkable directness.”
Works on paper, encompassing drawing, ink, collage, mixed media, paper cutting, and a host of experimental practices, have today achieved full recognition as autonomous artistic expressions in their own right. Within the context of contemporary African and Afro-descendant artistic practices, the medium carries particular resonance. Many artists turn to paper as a space for exploration and reflection, addressing themes of memory, identity, transmission, language, territory, and belonging with a directness and intimacy that larger-scale works do not always permit.
For collectors, the Histoires de Papiers programme offers a genuinely accessible point of entry into the practices of some of the fair’s most compelling exhibiting artists. Intimate in scale and often deeply personal in nature, these works reveal processes and sensibilities that invite close, attentive looking, the kind of sustained encounter that forms the foundation of a meaningful collecting relationship. The renewed appetite for works on paper is a trend evident across the broader market too, as seen in the von Goetz Gallery’s recent Jung-inspired contemporary art show, which similarly foregrounded intimate and experimental works.
An Exceptional International Selection: Galleries And Artists From Six Continents
The breadth and quality of AKAA’s exhibitor selection has always been one of its defining strengths, and the 2026 edition is no exception. Galleries from across Europe, Africa, and beyond bring an extraordinary range of artistic voices to the Carreau du Temple, with a combined roster that reflects the fair’s genuinely global ambitions.
Among the highlights of the Main Section, Galerie Vallois presents a remarkable group of artists from Benin, including Dominique Zinkpè and Epaphras Toïhen, while Primo Marella Gallery brings a richly diverse selection spanning Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, among them Joël Andrianomearisoa and Tegene Kunbi, whose works have attracted significant international institutional attention in recent years. Ceysson & Bénétière presents Ernest Breleur from Martinique, whose intricate, densely worked compositions reward prolonged attention.
La Maison Gaston offers works by Izae Etifier and Sylvia Eustache Rools, while Arte de Gema of Maputo introduces the work of Mozambican artists Mulalene and Thandi Pinto to a Paris audience.
The geographic sweep of the exhibitor list, taking in Harare, Kampala, Brussels, Rome, Geneva, Wiesbaden, Mexico City, Bangkok, and Lisbon among many others, underlines AKAA’s position as a truly international platform rather than a Paris-centric event with an African theme. It is a distinction that matters enormously, both artistically and commercially. The AKAA official website provides full gallery and artist listings for those wishing to plan their visit in advance.
Les Rencontres AKAA: A Cultural Programme To Match The Ambition
Beyond the gallery stands and the monumental installation, AKAA 2026 will be further enriched by Les Rencontres AKAA, the fair’s cultural platform. A series of talks, performances, screenings, and debates will bring together artists, curators, thinkers, and art market professionals to engage with the major questions shaping contemporary African creation and its growing influence on the global cultural landscape.
The programme reflects AKAA’s broader mission, one that extends well beyond the transactional dimensions of an art fair into genuine intellectual and cultural exchange. It is a forum in which emerging voices sit alongside established practitioners, and in which the conversations sparked can reverberate long after the final day of the fair.
The Selection Committee: Expertise Across Continents
The quality of AKAA’s artistic programme owes much to its distinguished Selection Committee, whose members bring expertise spanning Cape Town, Paris, Chicago, New York, and Dakar. Elana Brundyn, who played a central role in the launch of both Zeitz MOCAA and the Norval Foundation, brings more than two decades of experience at the highest levels of the international art world. Frédérique Chapuis, a journalist at Télérama for more than three decades, has devoted her career to championing underrepresented photographic practices across Africa. Mamadou-Abou Sarr, co-founder of the Sarr Prize in partnership with Les Beaux-Arts and Villa Albertine, serves on the boards of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Eve Therond, an independent art advisor and curator based in New York, brings fifteen years of expertise in contemporary African art and its diasporas, including a key role in the development of the Sindika Dokolo Collection. Ousseynou Wade, advisor to the Director of the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar and founder of the journal Afrik’Arts, contributes an unparalleled depth of knowledge of contemporary African critical discourse.
Together, they represent a collective intelligence that is both geographically diverse and professionally formidable, a guarantee that the works presented at AKAA have been subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny.
Practical Information: Visiting AKAA 2026
AKAA 2026 takes place at the Carreau du Temple, 4 Rue Eugène Spuller, 75003 Paris, from 23 to 25 October 2026. Public opening hours are 12 PM to 8 PM on 23 and 24 October, and 12 PM to 6 PM on 25 October. Full-price tickets are priced at €16, with a reduced rate of €11 available. Further information is available at akaa.com, and the fair can be followed on Instagram at @AKAA_FAIR.
For those with a serious interest in contemporary African and Afro-descendant art, whether as collectors, cultural enthusiasts, or lovers of exceptional visual work, AKAA 2026 is one of the unmissable events of the Paris autumn season, and of the broader international art calendar.
