What’s Happening: In a move akin to Fuorisalone still going ahead if Salone del Mobile were canceled, the artists and galleries of Dak’Art OFF are seeing through their summer plans amid the biennial’s rescheduled November date.

The Download: Just three weeks before Dak’Art, Senegal’s art biennial, was set to kick off on May 6, the government announced that the fair’s timing would shift six months, opening instead on November 7. The reasoning? The newly elected leadership wanted to wait for more “optimum conditions” to stage the fair. But visitors to the Senegalese capital have plenty to see through the end of the summer: the galleries and artists at the center of OFF, a network of satellite exhibitions that runs concurrently with Dak’Art, went ahead with their planned programming anyway. According to one report, the opening week scene wasn’t unlike Miami Art Week: Shows and parties, spilling out onto rooftops, restaurants, and galleries, and a snaking line of cabs choking streets and ferrying visitors around.

A youthful anti-establishment spirit is at the heart of OFF’s current edition, which confronts themes such as war, anti-colonialism, exploitative working conditions, and cultural belonging. At RAW Material Company, German-Ghanaian textile artist Zohra Opoku uses fabric, photos, and ancestral relics to address otherness and displacement. Na Chainkua Reindorf’s show of paintings (above) at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury serves as an electrifyingly feminine reinterpretation of West African masquerade and vodou cosmology. Other galleries, including OH (work pictured by Emmanuel Tussore) and Selebe Yoon, have seized the opportunity to stage multiple, concurrent shows. And at Black Rock’s group exhibition, held at Blaise Senghor Cultural Center, textile artist Samuel Nnorom taps into ideas of migration, consumption, and a re-appropriation of culture.

In Their Own Words: “The OFF is ON,” a columnist under the pen name Black Arts wrote in &Contemporary. “But this message is like a broken record. It fails to capture who’s calling the shots (IN) and who’s pushing boundaries underground (OFF). Let’s cut through the noise. Dakar is buzzing with creativity, Ministry of Culture or not. It’s the artists, the cultural pioneers, and the trendsetters who define what’s hot. Independence, inclusivity, and collaboration—now that’s the real deal.”

Surface Says: It might be a cliché to say that the show must go on, but to pull it off as stunningly as Dakar has, with the world watching, seems like the stuff of legend.

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You know For Freedoms’ artist-made billboards. Over the years, the art collective founded by Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Wyatt Gallery, and Michelle Woo has mobilized to bring hundreds of artists’ provocations to the skies. Now, the organization has teamed up with Phaidon imprint Monacelli to publish a monographic survey of the project on October 15, staring down the 2024 Presidential Election. The volume will feature all 550 billboards by the likes of Derrick Adams, Jeffrey Gibson, Jenny Holzer, Christine Sun Kim, Jesse Krimes, and more. Additionally, readers can look forward to topical essays by Rujeko Hockley and Nadya Tolokonnikova.

There’s perhaps no person with greater institutional knowledge of Art Basel than Sara Fitzmaurice, the founder of strategic agency Fitz & Co. The Minneapolis native grew up around the corner from the Walker Arts Center, studied art history at Boston University, and relocated to New York in 1990, where she quickly found herself immersed in the city’s burgeoning art market. She had early luck with clients—Art Basel was her first and remains one of her biggest to this day. Now a seasoned strategist with decades of experience advancing the goals of both nonprofit and for-profit entities, Fitzmaurice has attended practically every edition of the fair and has helped shepherd its dramatic growth from a Swiss upstart to a global force with closely watched annual editions in Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Paris.

Ahead of the fair’s flagship edition that’s drawing thousands of deep-pocketed collectors and art enthusiasts alike to Basel throughout the week, Fitzmaurice is sharing her most anticipated artists and presentations exclusively with Surface.

Charles Trevelyan grew up fascinated with the natural textures and color palettes of Western Australia’s wilderness, which both influenced his transition from studying science to the arts and how he favors hand-made maquettes and material experimentation when conceptualizing his sculptural, nature-inspired furniture. From marble tables resembling organic assemblages of smooth pebbles to resin vessels formed by gracefully concentric looped forms, the London-based talent is always looking to push materials to their limits in novel ways that shift our perceptions and shape our emotions.

Ever the downtowner’s destination for thought-provoking art, Hannah Traore recently celebrated the opening of her eponymous gallery’s latest show: “Don’t Touch My Hair.” The exhibition’s opening brought together the 18 featured artists—including Anya Paintsil, Camila Falquez, Hiba Schahbaz, and Wangechi Mutu—along with friends and family of the gallerist, who took inspiration from her 2022 Artsy spotlight and accompanying essay in curating the show. Visitors sipped on wines from IBest while perusing the show and congratulating Traore on the opening.

When was it? June 6

Where was it? Hannah Traore Gallery, New York

Who was there? Andy Jackson, Bernard James, Cynthia Edorh, Diallo Simon-Ponte, Jasmine Wahi, Jon Gray, Kevin Claiborne, and Quiana Parks.

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For the past 10 years, Tepozán has been Jalisco’s best-kept secret. Tepozán is one of the few estate-grown tequilas that is fully grown, processed, and hand-bottled at the source. Pared down to the essential ingredients of mature blue agave, natural yeast, and volcanic-filtered well water from its estate, the brand pours a tequila with absolutely no additives of any kind—just incredible flavor.

Surface Says: Estate-grown and additive-free, Tepozán stands out for its commitment to excellence through the old ways of the tequila-making craft.

New research illuminates why ancient people made charcoal art in caves.

This blue painted shrine is the latest discovery in a Pompeii “treasure chest.”

From Miu Miu to Pharrell, pearls are undergoing a fashion-fueled revival.

In Buenos Aires, Yiyo el Zeneize has been collecting fernet for a century.