PARIS TO CHICAGO, ROUND TRIP
Mariane Ibrahim moved to the US 11 years ago, frustrated that, despite her native France’s long colonial history in Africa, there just wasn’t a market for contemporary artists of the continent’s diaspora. “I needed to prove them wrong,” says Ibrahim, who is of Somali heritage.
Now, having built a much-watched gallery in Chicago, she’s expanding to Paris with her red-hot roster of artists—nearly all of them born in Africa or of African descent. “I’m in the intellectual and emotional place to come back to France and introduce them to progressive European collectors,” she says, noting she sees it as a “personal challenge” to bridge the multiple cultures in this time of social upheaval.
Her new outpost is a 4,300-square-foot, three-floor space on the same short stretch of the Right Bank’s Avenue Matignon as Christie’s, Skarstedt, White Cube, Perrotin and the future home of Sotheby’s, further cementing the area as a contemporary-art destination and Paris as the post-Brexit European capital of choice. Ibrahim titled this month’s inaugural exhibition J’ai Deux Amours, or “I Have Two Loves,” after Josephine Baker’s signature song about Paris and the US; each artist, including fast-rising star Amoako Boafo, will create a pair of works.
“I realized all of our artists have two places in their minds, and I am also from two places,” Ibrahim says. “They all have two loves that they navigate with.”