Gallery owner Mariane Ibrahim, representative of Afro-descendant artists: "The history of art that interests me has not yet been written"

Mariane Ibrahim hates the adjective "meteoric," having read and heard too often that she appeared in contemporary art like a meteor. It's true that she moved quickly. It only took her a decade to establish herself and have three galleries, in Chicago (United States), in Mexico City, and now in Paris, on Avenue Matignon, in the ^8th arrondissement. But, she jokes: "A meteorite falls, and I have no intention of falling." What she wants is to continue her work for Afro-descendant artists, whom she rightly considers to have been ignored in the ^20th century and to be still underrepresented today. "At the origin of my work, there is frustration. I was not predestined to become what I am."

That's an understatement. Mariane Ibrahim was born in Nouméa, New Caledonia, to Somali parents. Her father was a sailor, sailed around the world several times, and lived in Dunkirk (North) and Marseille. "A friend told him that there was work to be had in New Caledonia, and he thought it would be the right place to settle down." While passing through Djibouti, he met the woman who would become his wife. They have four children, she being the second. "In 1988, my mother felt homesick. We left for Somalia. But the situation there was already deteriorating, and we arrived in Bordeaux. There, the question of who I was became complicated."

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