Born in Beirut, Zakhem, who owns a construction company, first moved to Dakar two decades ago. It was around that time that he began investing in art, though it was only later that he began to build a collection; most of his early purchases were for as little as $30 and were given away as gifts. In 2003, Zakhem moved to Accra, a place he now considers home. Ghana remains at the center of Gallery 1957, which he founded in 2016. The first exhibition opened on Ghanaian Independence Day, March 6th, and 1957 is the year the country became an independent nation.
Gallery 1957 was initially intended to house Zakhem’s collection and make it available to the public. However, through conversations over the years, “the feedback I kept getting from artists is that there needed to be more of a market infrastructure,” Zakhem recalled. Though he observed talent thriving across Ghana and especially in Accra, there were few platforms to support the scene commercially, which meant artists needed to go elsewhere to sustain themselves. “If art collecting locally could grow,” he said, “then artists could live and flourish in their careers here, rather than being represented elsewhere.”