Saturday April 30, 2022
Mariane Ibrahim. Photography by Philip Newton. Courtesy of
Mariane Ibrahim Gallery.
When Mariane Ibrahim opened her elegant, new three-story art
gallery in Paris last September, she became the first Black gallerist to set up
shop in the French capital, and, according to the Somali-French art dealer, the
first dedicated to showing contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.
Located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, among other
noted galleries and close to landmarks like the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre,
the space has featured the otherworldly mixed-media figures of Haitian American
artist M. Florine Démosthène and found-image collages by Afro Latino artist
Clotilde Jiménez. In April, Ibrahim debuted the European show of Ghanaian
painter Amoako Boafo, who captures the beauty of Black skin in swirling, lush
brushstrokes.
Mariane Ibrahim on the show "Nomad."
The gallery's setting, in a crisp, airy new space, housed
inside a historical building designed in classic Haussmann style, was
particularly meaningful to her to underscore the importance of the lesser-seen
work. "It commands a certain contemplation, when you come in," she
said in a phone interview. "I really intended to have a space that is
prestigious, that is able to host the art of the future."
Before her homecoming to Paris, Ibrahim has spent the past
decade building her US presence through eponymous galleries in Seattle and
Chicago, with a focus on African diasporic art. Over the past few years,
American museums and galleries have made significant strides in representing
Black artists, she said, while art market interest has surged as well. But in
Paris, despite France's extensive colonial history with the continent, there
are no other galleries dedicated to artists of African heritage.
Façade of Mariane Ibrahim Paris. Credit: Courtesy Mariane
Ibrahim Gallery
"It's troubling, because we are in 2022, (in) France, a
country with such a strong connection to the world in general, but (especially)
to Africa, and the Indies, the Caribbean," she said. "There are more
African artists who have received museum attention...in the US in the past five
years than there has ever been in France in the past 50 years."
In the forthcoming CNN Originals show "Nomad with
Carlton McCoy," in which sommelier Carlton McCoy explores the lesser-seen
side of famous cities and countries, Ibrahim joined him and artist Raphaël
Barontini for a home-cooked meal in Barontini's studio in Saint-Denis, a
suburb, or "banlieue" of Paris. McCoy said in the episode that he had
noticed "a distinct lack of Black and Brown perspectives" in the
capital's famed museums.
"In France you're exposed to art, but you're exposed to
the domination of a culture over others," Ibrahim told him in the episode.
"What you are seeing are works of them by them about people like us."
Mariane Ibrahim, Carlton McCoy and Raphaël Barontini on
"Nomad."
Ibrahim began collecting Barontini's work in 2019, drawn to
the personal connection she felt to his work. Barontini is French, Italian and
Caribbean, and Ibrahim felt a kinship to the "hybridity" of his
practice, in which he silkscreens heroic African figures into regal
compositions redolent of art historical European paintings.
"Constantly people are asking you to choose: What are
you? Are you French, are you African?" Ibrahim said. "I refuse to do
that. I don't want to choose. I want to be everything."
Though Ibrahim is a pioneer in bringing contemporary African
diasporic art to Paris, she believes that others will soon follow.
Paris has "the right audience," she noted.
"That's why I'm very, very optimistic about France. I do think Paris is
going to be the capital of diversity."
Here, we asked Ibrahim to share five works of art that
stayed with her.
Mariane Ibrahim's most
impactful artworks
Seydou Keïta "Untitled" (1958-59)
When Ibrahim spotted a poster in a Parisian bar promoting an
exhibition that featured the work of 20th-century photographer Seydou Keïta,
who ran a portrait studio in Bamako, Mali, as the city transformed after
colonial rule, it set her on her track to becoming a gallerist. The portrait
featured, against a patterned backdrop, a man in a polished white suit and
thick-rimmed glasses delicately presenting a single flower to the viewer.
"The poster, the flower, the look reminded me of my
family photographs," she said. "It just put me back into something
that I was very familiar with. I was seeing my uncle, or my father's friend
holding this flower."
Influenced by Keïta, Ibrahim's first ever gallery show in
Seattle featured the work of his peer Malick Sidibé. She reflected: "That
image affected me to a point to want to start a gallery."
Tamara de Lempicka "Young Lady with Gloves" (1930)
This sumptuous, highly stylized painting by Polish Art Deco
painter Tamara de Lempicka is one of Ibrahim's favorites because it relishes in
the simple pleasure of beauty. The pictured woman peers out from beneath a
white wide-brimmed hat with matching gloves, resplendent in a jewel-toned green
dress and a bright red lip. "I know the art world gave up on beauty in the
60s...with minimalism," she commented. "I love maximalism."
De Lempicka was also a rare female perspective in figurative
painting, and Ibrahim appreciates the clarity of her gaze. "I am haunted
by this image of the drapery and this woman in the green dress," she said.
"Everything is charged...It's overcharged."
Arthur Jafa
"Love is the message, the message is death." (2016)
Set to Kanye West's gospel-infused track "Ultralight
Beam," this seven-and-a-half-minute video by artist and director Arthur
Jafa is a tribute to the creative power of Black Americans amid violence and
bigotry. Weaving together found video footage, Jafa creates a narrative of both
collective elation and despair.
"Every single time I look at that video, it just gives
me an energy that I can't explain -- an energy to destroy, and an energy to
restore, to fix, to change," Ibrahim said. "It just gives you
something that brings joy and brings pain with the same intensity."
Maimouna Guerressi,
"Surprise" (2010)
The photographs of Italian Senegalese multimedia artist
Maimouna Guerressi, who will be exhibiting at Ibrahim's Chicago location later
this year, are tinged with mystery, influenced by Islamic mysticism.
As a woman born in Europe who converted to Islam, Guerressi
assimilated to African traditions instead of the other way around. "She's
the opposite of me," Ibrahim said. "She adopted another culture,
changed her name, changed her religion...I found that really interesting and
courageous."
In "Surprise," a levitating woman in dramatic but
austere black and white garb gazes down at two young children in white robes,
the image exudes a sense of holy reverence. Speaking to Guerressi's larger
practice, Ibrahim said, "This is someone who completely immersed herself
in (African Muslim) culture and just created this extraordinary body of
work."
Gustave Courbet,
"L'Origine du Monde" (1866)
Ibrahim was a teenager when she first encountered an image
of French artist Gustave Courbet's cropped, close-up oil painting of a
reclining woman's vulva, and she said she felt like she "couldn't
hide" from the artwork. "I've never seen any body displayed that
way," she said.
After the painting was commissioned by an Ottoman diplomat,
it was passed around private collectors, rediscovered in an antique shop, and
looted during World War II before eventually being sold at auction to
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who kept it hidden behind a wooden sliding door.
It has been on public display since 1995 at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where
Ibrahim finally saw the work in person for the first time last year. She feels
the work is indicative of the experience of viewing an artwork.
"Art is supposed to make you feel slightly
uncomfortable," she said. "But you keep looking for that again and
again and again."