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How can retailers navigate economic headwinds, shifting consumer behaviours and rapid advances in AI technology to stay relevant and profitable? Vogue Business hosted the Power to the Marketer Festival 2023 in partnership with Emarsys to explore how brand leaders can combine art and science to deliver hyper-relevant experiences, win customers in a volatile market and turn a new generation of shoppers into fans.

This year’s global festival kicked off at Famtain private members club in Munich on 13 June before travelling to The Standard in New York on 4 October. “Marketers are walking a tightrope,” said Joanna Milliken, CEO of Emarsys. “On one side, their customers; on the other side, their business. They have to answer to both and keep both happy. It’s a balancing act.”

Fewer, bigger

In the opening fireside chat, Carolyn Dawkins, CMO of luxury jewellery retailer David Yurman, said the role of the marketer has become increasingly complex. “We try to focus on ‘fewer, bigger’,” she said. “What are the key things that will have the biggest impact? Who are the critical consumers we need to win? How do we acquire them, and how do we retain them? Then we have to galvanise the magic of the entire team around those big moments.”

The jeweller tapped Sofia Richie Grainge to be its newest global ambassador and the face of its Sculpted Cable bracelet collection campaign. “We knew we needed to attract the next generation — and there’s no one who dominates style on Instagram and TikTok more than Sofia Richie Grange,” said Dawkins. “The campaign delivered four of our top-performing marketing assets of all time and took us just three months to launch. Brands have to find that balance between agility and long-term planning.”

Doubling down on DNA

In a panel session on how to future-proof loyalty, Saks CMO Emily Essner pointed to a rebound in luxury spending. According to the latest Saks Luxury Pulse, a periodic online survey of luxury consumers’ attitudes towards shopping, spending and fashion trends, 58 per cent of luxury consumers planned to spend the same or more on luxury in the next three months, representing the first increase in luxury spending plans since the survey began tracking this in May 2022.

“Personalisation is really core to our strategy. We want to demonstrate to our customers that we know who they are and what they’re looking for,” said Essner. “That’s centred around what we call our customer DNA, which is about 250 observed and predicted attributes. That allows us to serve customers with highly relevant content and recommendations while driving retention.”

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Known for her perspective-bending murals (previously), Cinta Vidal explores the nuances of interiors and the myriad ways we interact within architecture in Cohabit, a new body of work presented with Thinkspace Projects in New York. “I’m intrigued by the relationship that people establish between themselves and their immediate surroundings, and now I’m zooming in to find out what’s going on in there,” Vidal says. “In contrast to my most recent works, where I played with darkness, I now strongly illuminate the scenes, which take on more vitality.”

The artist’s background in scenography and set design lends itself to a natural curiosity about how people move around and connect in different places. Notable art and architecture plays a key role in Vidal’s recent paintings, from the seminal Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, to paintings by the likes of Piet Mondrian, the cool tiles of a subway station, or a Renaissance arcade in a public square.

Vidal’s paintings flirt with perception, filling private rooms and public areas with figures who barely adhere to the laws of gravity. Each composition can be flipped or turned onto its side to reveal parallel narratives unfolding in the same space, suggesting overlapping layers of time. In “Eames,” for example, people and furnishings wander up one of the walls and onto the ceiling, while in “Room,” the composition can be arranged on any of its four sides. The artist achieves this balance by anchoring paintings, corners, and windows around a central vanishing point.

Cohabit goes on view for four days only, from October 18 to 21, at a Thinkspace Projects pop-up location on Broome Street. Find more on Vidal’s website and Instagram.

“Avenue” (2023), oil on canvas, 80 × 80 centimeters

“Hotel” (2023), oil on canvas, 73 × 61 centimeters

“Plaza” (2023), oil on canvas, 61 × 61 centimeters

“Subway” (2023), oil on canvas, 73 × 92 centimeters

“Museum” (2023), oil on canvas, 61 × 61 centimeters

“Parlor” (2023), oil on canvas, 100 × 100 centimeters

“Room” (2023), oil on canvas, 100 × 100 centimeters

“Atelier” (2023), oil on canvas, 81 × 100 centimeters

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Everyday Activities Revolve Around Interiors in Cinta Vidal’s Dizzying Oil Paintings appeared first on Colossal.

This October, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair returned to Somerset House for its 11th edition. The event has been a key player in the growing market for work by contemporary African artists since its inception in 2014 and this year was its most ambitious edition yet, featuring 170 artists across 62 galleries. It’s a significant increase from its 47 galleries the year before and a huge leap from the original 15 the event debuted with nine years ago. 

Wider appreciation for contemporary African art and art of the African diaspora has grown dramatically over the last decade among galleries and institutions alike. Significantly, major shows at galleries and institutions across London have also highlighted African artists this autumn, including the Nigerian painter Wura-Natasha Ogunji at Tiwani Contemporary and Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui’s site-specific commission hanging in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. 

As the market for contemporary African art continues to mature, 1-54 offers critical insight into the growing trends in art-making across the African continent. While figuration has dominated the market up to this point, we took note of three other key themes surfacing at this year’s fair and the artists behind them.

Installation view © Jim Winslet

Elevating the Everyday 

El Anatsui’s current Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern is a testament to the fact that the use of everyday items has become an integral part of the practice of numerous contemporary African artists. Composed of thousands of metal bottle caps, Behind the Red Moon is the artist’s largest piece to date and is a commentary on the movement of goods and people under the transatlantic slave trade. The specific liquor bottle tops, sourced in Nigeria, are part of a present-day industry built on colonial trade routes.   

At 1-54, the use of found objects could be seen across many artist’s practices, especially those exploring themes of cultural identity. That includes works by Ghanaian artist Caleb Kwarteng Prah, presented by Nil Gallery. Prah uses the doors of trotros–converted minibuses turned into share taxis—to frame his photographs of members of the Ghanaian working class. His piece Dan x Kofi features a whole white door decorated with religious and floral imagery with two individual pictures of a man inside the door’s windows. 

Meanwhile, at the Paris-based Afikaris Gallery’s stand, Nigerian ceramicist Ozioma Onuzulike’s Beaded Blouse with Two Front Pockets For August Meeting II is a shirt made of natural palm kernel shells, earthenware and stoneware clays, ash glazes, recycled glasses, and copper wire. The artist has recently used palm kernels in his “Palm Kernel Shell Beads” series as a means of recognizing both the cultural and economic value the seed held in West Africa during and after the slave trade.

Ghanaian artist Kwaku Yaro, whose paintings were featured at the Paris-based Septieme Gallery’s 1-54 booth and were priced around $12,000, uses upcycled carrier bags with a distinctive “Ghana Must Go” design, as well as chequered nylon totes strongly associated with migration in West Africa, to create portraits of Ghana’s youths. Also, the Cape Town gallery Whatiftheworld showed works by South African artist Chris Soal, who creates unusual sculptural pieces using mass-produced objects such as beer bottle tops and bamboo toothpicks, as seen in his work Only Thing You Know.

Installation view © Jim Winslet

Beyond the Body

Figurative realism in African art may have been the hottest trend both in primary and secondary market sales in recent years, but several artists are experimenting with the human form in new ways. A notable name among the artists at 1-54 was Senegalese mixed-media painter and sculptor Soly Cissé, whose neo-expressionist style paintings have been garnering interest around the globe. His mixed-media piece Le danseur, shown by La Galerie 38, portrayed loosely drawn figures with both human and animal features.

Sudanese artist Salah Elmur (Vigo Gallery) and Egyptian artist Souad Abdelrassoul reclaim cubism from Picasso’s appropriation of the African-inspired style. Many of Elmur’s pieces draw on memories of visiting his grandfather’s photography studio as a child; the artist steers away from capturing the likeness of his subjects and instead focused on the character and mood of the paintings, articulated through geometric shifts in the picture plane.

Abdelrassoul, whose painting Me You And The Journey  is currently on view on the exterior of the Hayward Gallery in London, transfigures the human body by splicing it with trees and other elements of the natural world. In Orange Tree, priced at $16,000 at Circle Gallery’s 1-54 booth, the eyes and arms of her subject are intentionally misplaced to create an aesthetically jarring composition.

Installation view © Jim Winslet

Rethinking Crafts 

Many African countries have long been known for their craftwork, especially pieces using traditional sculpture and weaving techniques. That said, 1-54 saw many artists break away from customary ways of using craft either aesthetically or technically to create unique, standout pieces.

Reinata Sadimba is considered one of Mozambique’s most important contemporary artists, despite the fact that figurative sculpture is traditionally considered men’s work among her ethnic group, the Makonde. She’s revolutionary in more than her art practice, too. Sadimba took part in the liberation movement against the Portuguese colonial regime and, after Mozambique achieved independence in 1975—and having lost six of her seven children— she dedicated herself to sculpture. Her anthropomorphic terracotta works, brought by Perve Galeria proved a standout at the fair. 

Other sculptural works included new pieces by the renowned Senegalese artist Seyni Awa Camara, shown by The Gallery of Everything. Her terracotta pieces, which often depict mythological deities,  are a celebration of her Jola identity and related to the mystical qualities of motherhood within her community.

However, artists have also been pushing the limits of textile and fabric art as well. The London-based gallery Tafeta showcased the work of the British-Ghanaian textile and performance artist Enam Gbewonyo. Since 2016, Gbewonyo has been developing the series “Nude Me/ Under the Skin,” which explores the history of nude tights. Her piece Cyclical Vein—Concentric Growth 4 ($9,000-$12,000) used nylon stockings of different “nude” colors to create a woven sculptural wall hanging. Hannah Traore Gallery showed textile pieces by the Welsh-Ghanian artist Anya Paintsil. Paintsil is known for intertwining rug-hooking, embroidery, and tapestry-making alongside Black hairstyling techniques such as braids—sometimes even using human hair in her work. 

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