5 MINUTES WITH TOURIA EL GLAOUI | The Woman Behind 1-54 Art Fair
1:54’s founding director Touria El Glaoui tells us about starting the event, her family connections to art and the importance of giving African artists a platform to compete on the world stage
My family history is entangled with Marrakech because my grandfather Thami was the last Pasha of the city and my father Hassan was a well known artist who found a lot of inspiration in Marrakech.
However, my memories of the city came from visiting for holidays, gathering with my parents, siblings, grandmother and aunts in a family riad, playing in the gardens and immersing ourselves in a place that felt very different to Rabat where we grew up. My time here as a child was about my father’s cultural passions – horses, gardens, beautiful things. All this, plus love, are my strongest memories. Whatever was transmitted to me was positive.
I left Morocco to further my education in NY, and started my professional life in the financial sector in private wealth before moving into the telecoms industry. But art was of course a part of my family legacy and in 2012, I curated an exhibition of work by my father and Winston Churchill in London. My grandfather, who was friendly with Churchill because he visited Marrakech to paint, was resistant to my father becoming an artist because it wasn’t considered a worthy profession. Churchill championed my father’s talent and persuaded my grandfather to let him go to Paris. He was the first Moroccan to study art abroad and became internationally known.
During that time, I was also heading up Cisco’s sales in Africa and it was then that I really started to discover the whole continent. I also went to see as many galleries and studios as I could on my work trips and found a really dynamic art scene that was going completely unrecognised in Europe and the US. Many people still thought African art was about all the tired stereotypes of traditional masks. But what I found was so exciting and vibrant.
I’d catalogued my father’s art so I knew the vital importance of international visibility in his career. And this sparked the idea of what was needed for African artists. I saw an opportunity to create an art fair that really championed the continent’s creative talent and so I left my job to launch 1:54 in London in 2013.
It was the scariest moment of my career. I had so many doubts. Would it work? Why hadn’t someone created this platform before? There was a lot of uncertainty and lonely moments but thankfully artists, gallerists and museum curators connected with 1:54. Following the success of the London edition, we started an edition in New York in 2015.
1:54 is about more than commercial representation though. It’s key to ensure African artists are part of the narrative of contemporary art, featured in major institutions, collections and books. That’s our core mission. And it was quickly very clear to me that I needed to create an edition on the continent.
I considered cities like Cape Town but then, perhaps inevitably, my thoughts turned to Marrakech. It’s well connected travelwise, has amazing infrastructure like hotels and cultural platforms that I knew could be used to support the fair. Also, I wanted to tackle the issue of the cultural disconnection between North Africa and the rest of the continent. They’re often seen as very separate and so anchoring the African edition of 1:54 in Marrakech was an important part of what we stood for. There are invisible borders that we want to break down.
Marrakech has always been – and will always be – one of those places that writers, musicians and artists will come to. The light and colours have always attracted them and the Marrakech Biennale and then 1:54 have put the city on the map as a creative hub. Many of the key Moroccan artists are now based here and that means the new artistic generation will come here too. It’s an inspiring city to work in.
Read more about the 1:54 African Contemporary Art Fair in Marrakech from 30th January – 2nd February 2025
