For private collectors and institutions building collections of lasting significance.
I founded H'Wyler to bring specialist depth to a market most advisors treat as a sideline.
Of Cameroonian and Swiss heritage, I work between Africa’s contemporary art scene and the European collectors and institutions engaging with it.
My background is in gallery work and private dealing, including blue-chip modern and post-war works for European collectors. I advise in English and German.
Every engagement is personal and confidential, shaped around the collection and the collector.
Acquisition strategy, sourcing and due diligence for collectors building focused holdings in African contemporary art.
Collection development for companies and institutions, including programmes aligned with ESG and cultural commitments.
Discreet access to primary and secondary-market works through gallery relationships across the continent and its diaspora.
For most of the past two decades, African contemporary art was discussed in the language of potential — a market “on the verge,” a category “about to break through.” That language no longer fits. The market has arrived, and the institutions, artists, and collectors driving it are no longer asking for recognition. They are setting the terms.
By Alexandra Huwyler, Founder, H’Wyler Art Advisory
For most of the past two decades, African contemporary art was discussed in the language of potential — a market “on the verge,” a category “about to break through.” That language no longer fits. The market has arrived, and the institutions, artists, and collectors driving it are no longer asking for recognition. They are setting the terms.
Sotheby’s has built its Modern & Contemporary African Art department into a genuine category leader, having set more than 200 world auction records in the space since 2016. In 2024, the house took a further step: rather than treating African artists as a specialist sidebar, it began folding them directly into its flagship international Modern & Contemporary sales — placing them in the same rooms, and the same conversations, as their global peers. That single decision says more about where this market stands than any amount of advocacy could.
The artists driving this shift are not waiting in line. Amoako Boafo’s rise from regional gallery representation to Gagosian, with a 2026 solo presentation in Venice timed to the Biennale, has been one of the fastest individual trajectories in contemporary painting, full stop — not just within an African or diasporic category. Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s first official joint portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama, unveiled at the Obama Presidential Center, alongside a $2.8 million result at Frieze Los Angeles, signals an artist operating comfortably at the centre of American cultural life, not at its margins. El Anatsui, now in his eighties, continues to hold the strongest and most consistent secondary-market record of any African-born artist working today — proof that this is not a market built solely on momentum, but on depth.
Institutionally, the picture is just as serious. Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town remains the continent’s largest contemporary art museum, and even through the loss of its founding director, the late Koyo Kouoh, in May 2025, the institution has continued to operate with clear leadership and purpose. Biennials and fairs — Dak’Art in Senegal, marking its sixteenth edition this November; 1-54, now spanning London, New York, Marrakech, and Nairobi; and, closer to home for a Swiss audience, the newly launched Africa Basel, held alongside Art Basel each June — have given the market an infrastructure that didn’t exist a decade ago.
What’s still missing is not credibility, but advisory depth. Most generalist art advisors treat African contemporary art as one line item among many, alongside Old Masters, Impressionism, and global contemporary — useful for diversification, rarely the focus of real expertise. That gap is precisely where a dedicated specialist practice has something to offer: not access to a market that’s hard to find, but fluency in one that is increasingly easy to find and difficult to navigate well.
The collectors who treated this category seriously five years ago are not discovering anything now — they are simply ahead. For everyone else, the opportunity is less about being early than about being properly advised.
Whether you are considering a specific acquisition or the direction of a collection, I am glad to talk it through. All enquiries are treated in confidence.