Taking the Investec Art Fair in Cape Town 2023 as a starting point, I discuss the presence and absence of different languages at the fair. Based on interviews with participating South African artists, I will discuss their experiences with language hierarchies and the role of their first language in their artistic work. I will also include exhibitions curated by South African galleries in my analysis. For a comparative perspective, I will refer to the International Contemporary Art Fair 2023 in Budapest. I understand artistic production as a personal expression and a commodity, embedded in a complex set of social relations that contribute to its creation (Becker, 1982). Creative processes are influenced by the economic decisions of artists, dealers and collectors, which contribute the social creation of value in art (Plattner 1996). Art fairs and galleries are commercialized spaces which reflect and influence broader trends and market dynamics of the global art market. Numerous art fairs emerged in the global South, while well-established art spaces in the global North have made efforts to bring formerly “peripheralized“ art into their exhibition halls and “into the centers of international discourse and practice“ (Enwezor 2004: 438). However, biennials and art fairs in the global South don’t promote an egalitarian space, because the affirmation and legitimation of art still takes place in Europe and the United States (Kasfir 2018). Artists depend on the gallerists‘ and collectors‘ understandings of legitimate and valuable artistic expression. In South African art fairs, the political language regime intersects with the language regime of the global art market. Against this backdrop, I question the role of minority languages in the visual arts from a decolonial perspective. I reflect on how linguistic power is distributed in the global art market and how value is granted to pheripheralized linguistic expression.