It may not be the best choice for everyone, but I’ve learned to skip the bustle of the opening reception. It’s never harder to connect with a piece of artwork than when  you’re packed sardine-style into sixteen square feet of space holding your coat, a glass of wine, and a collection of brochures in the same hand. I’ll sacrifice photo ops with artists and first dibs on the inventory if it means I can just browse art in peace. And on Thursday afternoon, Eunice and I did just that. 

As I’ve written and explained before, I’ve been going to the Affordable Art Fair for years — since before Black Star Reviews was even a thing. My impression after my first visit was: Is this affordable? Where’s the art I’d buy if I had the money? Between the forty dollars I spent on the ticket to Art After Dark and the ten dollar glass of wine at the bar, I left the fair feeling like I wasn’t quite sure what I was really buying, especially since I wasn’t heading back uptown with any artwork. Each booth had its own intrigue, but none of them featured the kind of art I’d grown up with at home. It made me wonder if my taste was unrefined. 

The walls of my childhood homes had prints of the works you see in the background of The Cosby Show. Paintings of baptisms and parishioners in their Sunday best — scenes of Black life. The art at the fair was bold-faced knockoffs of Banksy, Warhol, and the sort of large-scale unobtrusive background works that I imagine hoteliers buy in bulk to place one canvas per room. I had little interest in a painting of Audrey Hepburn, or a blown up photo of the Eiffel Tower. These accessed the same level of emotional depth in me as the throw pillows at Home Goods. I didn’t want art that functioned as a home accessory, I wanted something I could feel. No offense intended toward the droves of people who have that same Tom Ford coffee table book, but I want the things in my home to represent something other than my access to material trappings.    

I didn’t offer this feedback to the fair, but I get the feeling that someone else did because over time, I started to see more spots of brown on the canvases and more approachable faces at the booths. Soon there were not only Black figures in the artwork, but Black artists at the fair, and Black gallerists curating booths. I’m never shocked when the booths that stop me in my tracks are the ones that involve Black expression. I’m sure you can tell from my reviews that I know what I like: super-duper-dead-of-night-Blackness.

This year I attended the fair courtesy of SHEER, an indie media company and virtual art gallery with a real-life exhibition at F1 in the corner of the second floor. Their spring booth features another installment of geometric collages by Nia Winslow, ambient figural oil paintings by Alanis Forde, and rhythmic textiles by Asari Aibangbee. The brilliance of SHEER’s booth is in the way it shifts the tempo of your stroll around the fair. The mix of colors and textures are a welcome interruption to what can begin to feel like a parade of beige abstraction. While so many other curations feature no faces at all, the subjects in these works look back at the viewer. Winslow’s works often recreate photos of real life; they feel like my own memories and family members which I wrote about here. Forde’s paintings feature bodies dotted with blue, but still undeniably Black. Aibangbee’s textiles swap figures for fibers, but you can see where the influence of West African art has been woven in. Finally, we’re in conversation with something real. Finally, we’re connecting.

There will always be those who prefer the buzzing frequency of the fair’s first night, hunting for something neutral and slim for their apartment entryway. As for me and my house? I’ll take a quiet weekday afternoon to relish feeling. We’re here and we are stirring.     

The spring edition of the Affordable Art Fair is in New York at the Metropolitan Pavilion from Wednesday, March 19 to Sunday, March 23, 2025. Tickets are required for entry. All works are available for purchase. The fair will return to New York in the fall of 2025. 

You can watch a highlight video of this event on TikTok here. You can also read about my previous visits to the Affordable Art Fair in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024.