AfriKin Art Fair 2026

The 2026 theme GRIOT: Urgent Storytelling for Our Times A landmark exhibition celebrating the creative traditions of testimony, defiance, and endurance. GRIOT centers creative tradition as an act of survival, witness, and transformation. Drawing on the West African griot and griotte, the men and women who served as keepers of history and truth-tellers, sometimes celebrating achievements and sometimes issuing warnings, the exhibition positions contemporary artists as inheritors of that lineage: those who remember, those who name, and those who imagine otherwise. “This is not an exhibition of archaic pasts, it is a powerful, living archive.” —Joseph L. Underwood, Ph.D., Curator Across painting, sculpture, photography, textile, and other media, the selected artists explore what it means to carry memory across time, space, and context, to make beauty out of struggle, and to insist on joy as a radical act. Rooted in history or in present worlds, these are works that speak to our audience and carry stories that resonate with our current lived experiences.