Okiki Akinfe Wins Inaugural £30,000 Dasha Shenkman Focus Fund at Frieze London

Key facts

• Okiki Akinfe won the inaugural £30,000 Dasha Shenkman Focus Fund at Frieze London for her painting Fame is a Gun, a lightbox, and a preparatory drawing.
• The Contemporary Art Society launched the fund to mark its tenth anniversary of acquiring works for UK public institutions.
• Akinfe's winning works will enter the collection of Abbot Hall in Kendal.
• The £100,000 CAS Collections Fund purchased works by Claudia Alarcón and the Silät collective, Karimah Ashadu, and Gala Porras-Kim, all destined for The Whitworth in Manchester.
• Ella Fleck received the Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Award and will have a solo show at Camden in 2027.
• The Arts Council Collection Frieze Acquisitions Fund increased to £90,000, more than double its 2023 amount, funding acquisitions by Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Oliver Osborne, Laurie Smith, and Armando D. Cosmos.
• The 2026 Tate Frieze Fund, backed by Alexander Lewis, Alexander V. Petalas, and other donors, enabled Tate to acquire Michaela Yearwood-Dan's Peace Unknown (2026) and Luis Fernando Zapata's Barge (1992).
• For all four artists in the CAS Collections Fund purchases, this marks the first acquisition of their work for a UK museum.