Africa Rising: Highlights from the Africa First Collection, by Serge Tiroche: ACEL SEOUL

Opening on September 3rd as part of ACEL art company’s inauguration festivities, the exhibition takes place during the Seoul Art Weekend, which also includes Frieze Seoul and KIAF art fairs.

For much of modern art history, African contemporary art remained on the margins.

Today, however, Africa is no longer a periphery but an emergent center. From this shifting ground arises a body of work that carries the memories of colonial histories, the narratives of community, the urgencies of gender and healing, and visions of identity and transcendence—all articulated in a powerful language of the present.

This exhibition marks the first presentation in Korea of contemporary art from Africa, drawn from the Africa First Collection, which Serge Tiroche, an Israeli-born global collector and art advisor, has built over the past decade. As co-founder of the Tiroche DeLeon Collection and founder of the Africa First Initiative, Tiroche has championed artists not only from across Africa but also from Latin America and the Middle East, bringing their voices onto the international stage. His collecting practice extends far beyond acquisition, functioning as a curatorial act that expands both artistic vision and social value.

Featuring twenty-one works by sixteen artists, the exhibition encompasses painting, textile, mixed media, leather, and works on paper. Each reflects its own local realities and cultural layers, yet together they form a shared chorus that resonates with the complexities of the contemporary world. This is not simply an introduction to the art of a region. It is an attempt to weave the layered identities and intertwined histories of Africa into an artistic language, while demonstrating how a collection itself can become both a curatorial statement and a political, aesthetic record.

Through Africa Rising, ACEL introduces African contemporary art to Korea not as a distant “other,” but as a contemporary presence. Africa here is not a faraway continent but a vital pulse—another beating heart that shapes the world we share.