White cubes, Kerry James Marshall and canapés on Cork Street—an insider’s Frieze diary 

My week begins with a scramble. I ignore multiple alarms before surfacing at 7am to clear emails ahead of my Frieze VIP consultant duties. By 9.30 I’m at Regent’s Park collecting accreditation, surrounded by consultants from across the world. There’s a buzz in the air. In the afternoon, I juggle last minute requests and put together my highlights for Frieze Masters. Frieze London and Frieze Masters make up the most significant week in London’s art calendar. Dubbed “Frieze Week” by most, the actual fair consists of two vast tents in Regent’s Park housing hundreds of the world’s leading galleries for five days. Frieze London focuses on contemporary work, while Frieze Masters spans art made mainly before 2000, from million year old fossils to medieval manuscripts. In the city galleries time their strongest shows for the surge in footfall. The first day attracts celebrities, curators, and collectors alike. I now work as a VIP consultant for Africa, connecting collectors and galleries from across the continent to the fair. 

Tonight, I must divide myself into four: a gallery opening at Albion Jeune, a cocktail party with ELLE magazine, dinner with Stevenson Gallery, and a Loewe perfumes event. I begin with Albion Jeune, where I’ve written the exhibition text for a ’driane nieves’ solo exhibition. The artist is absent, but the room is at capacity. nieves’ monumental abstract paintings dominate the space, alongside visceral soft sculptures. 

I get the tube to ELLE’s 40 for 40 celebration of women in the art world: editor-in-chief Kenya Hunt’s gives a speech, we raise a toast, I have two glasses of champagne and exit swiftly. Dinner follows at Royal China (one of my favourites) with Stevenson Gallery. I breathe a sigh of relief as I sit down between familiar faces: Lerato, a director of the gallery and painter Jemila Isa. This event consists of sesame prawn toast, light gossip, and a conversation with a hero of mine, South African artist Penny Siopis. I tell her how her film Obscure White Messenger “changed my life”. Because it did. She is warm and receptive to my praise. As we converse I begin to think, “do meet your heroes.”

I slip out during dessert for the Loewe Parfums event on New Bond Street, where my flatmate Camilla Aiko is waiting. As an actor, she is immersed in a different frenzy; the BFI film festival is also happening this week, though you wouldn’t know it working in the art world. The crowd has shifted, but in the smoking area, the first person we meet works at art gallery Saatchi Yates. Inside, I am implored to take several photos of a man standing in front of the perfumes. My feet ache, the music is good, and we wonder what would happen if we danced. By 11.30, I’m limping towards the tube, Camilla insisting it’s the fastest route home. 

Another early start. This time for my headshot in Regent’s Park under a grey, unflattering sky. 

This evening’s schedule is lighter. My first stop is at Pippy Houldsworth gallery for the opening of Shaquelle Whyte’s solo show Winter Remembers April. I am captivated by the painting Blackbirds singing in the dead of night, in which a roaring fire billows with smoke as figures bolt in different directions into the night. I realise I haven’t RSVPd to the dinner I was supposed to attend. I try my luck anyway, but there are no empty seats. I regroup with artists Okiki Akinfe and Deborah Segun, and we decide to head to the Sadie Coles opening on cork street, if only for the promise of canapés. 

The new gallery, a multi-storey townhouse, is glowing in the evening’s darkness. People flow in and out. Lisa Brice’s paintings line the walls of each floor. Our group triples in size as we bump into other Gen Z art workers. I find myself rambling (champagne fuelled) about how masterful it is that Brice continually draws from two paintings, Vallotton’s La Blanche et la Noire and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère as source material, to consistently produce interesting work. 

Eventually, Okiki mentions the White Cube party at Below Stone Nest. Could we all get in now that our group had tripled in size? Somehow, we do. By 00:30, I’m back on the tube home. Sleep is essential ahead of the big day.

My first tour begins at noon and stretches for two and a half hours. My long list of highlights includes: Bunmi Agusto at Tafeta in the West Africa–Brazil-focused section Echoes in the Present, Zanele Muholi’s sculpture at Southern Guild, an early Carrie Mae Weems photograph at Goodman Gallery, Frida Orupabo’s haunting collage at Stevenson and Toby Cato Grant’s and Christelle Oyiri’s solo booths with Harlesden High Street and Gathering, respectfully.

By the end of the tour, I’m parched and grateful to be hosting lunch at Jikoni inside the fair. I realise I’ve gone the whole day without water. Some of my guests mistakenly go to the actual Jikoni in Marylebone, closed during Frieze.

In the final hour of the fair, I linger near the entrance falling in and out of various conversations until I have to be back at Jikoni for a Frieze x Stone Island cocktail. I leave Regent’s Park in the dark, to another gathering at a collector’s home. The environment is warm, there is food and the company is familiar. I dash home on foot to swap my semi-corporate outfit for something more suitable, and meet a friend. We’re going to the Prada Mode party.

Outside is a sea of people. We queue for nearly two hours, lingering at the front for most of the time thinking we’d be let in any second (thanks to Mia, an NHS doctor, and her fashion-insider mother for getting us to the door). At 00:03 we finally make it in, and it feels worth the wait. By day, Prada Mode was hosting a series of talks and performances, with figures including Poor Things production designer Shona Heath, and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien. By night, it’s a rave and I’m on the dancefloor again with artists Okiki Akinfe and Shaquelle Whyte from the night before. I leave at 2am. Home by 3am, I check in online for my Thursday flight from bed.

My alarms go off and my body refuses to cooperate. I jolt back into motion, knowing I must not miss this morning’s curator’s tour of Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at the Royal Academy, hosted by David Zwirner. It starts at 8am and I arrive late. The tour is already well underway, which means I get the rare luxury of having the exhibition to myself for a few minutes. 

The first painting I look at has a sepia palette, mimicking the style of a renaissance underpainting. It depicts solely Black figures in a museum, with children seated on the floor and tour guides mid-gesture. Immediately overcome with emotion, I cry. Slowly roaming the main galleries, I finally catch up with the group and meet the curator, Mark Godfrey. Before leaving, I internally jump for joy, as I spot my book, Reframing Blackness: What’s Black About ‘History of Art’? in the RA gift shop. 

I am back at Frieze for 11am. The fair has a slightly quieter energy than the day before, and I move through it knowing it’s my last lap. It’s a shortened Frieze Week for me and FOMO sets in for the things I’ll miss: the talks programme at Frieze Masters, Gathering’s party at Space Talk. The art world migrates to Paris next week, I go further south, to Lagos.