Touria El-Glaoui: celebrating a continent
“I wanted to create an event that African artists could be extremely proud of, to ensure that they knew I wasn’t trying to categorise them into anything, but rather give them a voice."
In this week’s podcast, special guest Touria El-Glaoui, Founding Director of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, joins us to discuss the event’s expansion, her long-term fascination with the continent and how her father’s career as an artist impacted her own fascination with the sector.
Learn more about the resilience and ambition required to develop a fair which now holds a prominent position in the market’s calendar, and the importance of recognising skills which transfer across sectors.
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Born and raised in Morocco, Touria El-Glaoui completed her education in New York before beginning a career in the banking industry as a wealth management consultant. After 10 years in the field she relocated to London, where she initiated 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in 2013. She has since launched the fair in New York in 2015, in Marrakech in 2018 and in Paris 2021. 1-54 is now a world-leading platform dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.
Parallel to her career, Touria has organised and co-curated exhibitions of her father’s work, Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui, in London and Morocco. She has spoken widely and chaired numerous discussions on contemporary African art and women in leadership at leading institutions and events globally.
Touria El Glaoui was listed amongst the 50 most powerful women in Africa by Jeune Afrique magazine in 2015, 2018 and 2019. She is Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française since February 2019. She is on the advisor board of Christie’s Education, and in 2022 was invited to join the new Scholarly Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. More recently, as of January 2023 she was awarded the Gold Medal in the arts by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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