As of today, my Roth Contributory IRA balance stands at $3,372.30. Being that I’m 23, that number is not an astonishingly low figure, but it isn’t particularly impressive either, and no, I do not have any sort of trust fund. However, if I emptied all that money — and for the purpose of this article there would be no taxes on that extraction — to spend it at the Affordable Art Fair in New York City, which opened this week and runs through Sunday, March 23, I could walk out with at least one artwork, tightly wrapped in a paper, probably within the hour.
Imagining what it would be like to be a first-time art collector at the twice-annual Metropolitan Pavilion event, I told myself I’d mentally purchase artworks that would amount to my $3,372.30 retirement savings. That sum would put me comfortably within the fair’s $100–$12,000 price range (and out of the running for retirement).
The show saw $5.1 million in sales last spring and $3.6 million this past fall, according to the organizers. Affordable Art Fair Director Erin Schuppert told me that the average first-time collector is usually between the ages of 25 and 50 years old. For a Thursday around noon, the fair was unexpectedly teeming with casually dressed visitors, including some families with children.
I instantly surpassed my budget by about 200% when I met Mayowa Nwadike at the second-floor booth of the Brooklyn gallery Warnes Contemporary, underwritten by the fair as part of its fellowship program. Schuppert said she founded the program in 2022 as a way for emerging galleries to participate when costs might otherwise have been prohibitive.
Nwadike’s 48-inch tondo painting “While I Was Waiting II” (2025), a portrait of a woman against a muted green background, stood out in Warnes Contemporary’s quaint booth. The gallery was founded just a couple of years ago by Victoria J. Fry in Gowanus. Although the $6,000 painting was way out of my budget, I chose to mentally purchase it anyway.
By day, Nwadike works at Kaia Wine Bar on the Upper East Side, where he met the stunning subject of his painting. “She walked in and she was with her friend, and I was her server,” Nwadike told me. “Before she left, after I dropped the check, I said something like, ‘I want to work with you.’”
Similarly, Nwadike approached the subject of his painting “My Cup Runneth Over” (2024) — which sold for $8,500 before the fair even opened on Thursday, in time to save me from running through my retirement savings — at his first-ever show in 2022 after seeing them walk by the gallery.
“My work is all about storytelling … talking about gender roles, toxic masculinity, talking about my immigrant experience,” Nwadike said.
Trudging over to Eleventh Hour Art’s booth, with a negative balance in my symbolic wallet, Christina Justiz Roush’s plaster-cast busts drew my attention. Carter Shocket, the gallery’s director, explained that Roush performs a ceremony while casting the chests of people she knows.
“She has you lie down, and she’s dipping the plaster strips into the water, and she’ll have you infuse the water with something that’s meaningful to you,” Shocket explained. While the plaster dries, the artist asks the models about their lives.
The figure with the most gemstones and the most color, “Sentinel 5: Imprimatur,” piqued my interest because of its vague religious subtext. At $5,800, it was not in my budget.
Because I am a brain-rotten member of Gen-Z, my next stop was purely based on the fact that this particular painting bore a kindred resemblance to the album cover of Bad Bunny’s new album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.
The 31-by-43-and-a-half-inch painting was “Lunch Time” (2010) by artist Pham Binh Chuong, offered by Judith Hughes Day Vietnamese Contemporary Fine Art for $6,500. It depicts a quartet of white Monobloc chairs, the same kind featured on the Puerto Rican music star’s album. The chair is said to be the most widely used furniture item in the world.
Finally, in the sculptural realm, I found some works in my price range. French artist Anne de Villeméjane’s slender, deep blue, flamenco dancer-inspired sculpture “Walking Woman (Petit Blue)” (2024) could reasonably come home with me for $3,200 of my life savings.
But perhaps most reasonably set in my price range, at $400, was Yusuke Okada’s tiny painting “Vacation.” In the era of the limited series Severance, it’s only fit that I should acquire a torso severed from its legs, which have decided to pack a suitcase. “Goes on vacation with no permission,” the painting reads.
The last works I noted on my way out as the most affordable option were Ortaire de Coupigny’s epoxied canned Sardines at $240 a piece, wall-mounted paintings complete with fish eyes that gaze through your soul.
At the end of the day, I found most of the work I encountered at the Affordable Art Fair to be far out of my (imaginary) budget, save a few small items. While the show felt more geared toward an older first-time collector looking to spend upwards of $5,000 on a single artwork, there were plenty of gems to admire and new artists to discover in an approachable, warm setting.
