East Africa’s first modern art auction includes bargains starting at $1,140

NAIROBI, Kenya—Kenya is set to host its first ever modern and contemporary art auction next week, amid a surge in global interest in African art.

The retrospective, to be held on Nov. 5, will span the best work produced by artists from across East Africa over the last 40-plus years. Fiona Fox, co-founder and director of Circle Art Agency, which was established to help cultivate the contemporary art market in East Africa, says that while the genre has been gaining in popularity and status, it lags behind art from West and South Africa and is relatively unknown internationally.

“Our primary aim is to grow the local market,” says Fox, who helped to set up the Tate’s African arts acquisition committee two years ago. “There is no platform in the region to sell work on the secondary market currently.”

The auction comes amid growing international awareness of and appetite for art from the continent. Earlier this year, sales of African art at Bonhams, the London-based auction house, topped the £1 million ($1.6 million) mark, while London’s Somerset House hosted the 1:54, the city’s inaugural contemporary African art fair. Online auctioneer, the Auction Room, launched its first sale of African art last week, with estimates for the work ranging from £1,000 to £75,000.