Mariane Ibrahim

Thank you so much.

I'm very touched by your introduction and the admiration is mutual.

So thank you for having me.

I've always been impressed by the gallery world.

I mean, that aspect of the gallery seemed, you know, a very opaque environment and an unaccessible, you know, sort of a space.

I didn't grow up in really big cities.

I grew up in Bordeaux, and this is where you kind of have a little bit of, you know, that artistic formation, you know, but there's not much of a scene.

So sadly, there's not a school or a particular training that prepares you for that.

And I think it came from a little bit of a frustration.

As I was hanging out with a lot of artists in my early 20s, I could see how they were struggling with getting a gallery, you know.

And I have always admired the work of the artists.

But then I realized that they sort of were very much impressed by that status of the gallery.

And every single time that I would hang along, they would see, you know, oh, here she comes, oh, here he comes.

And I think that sort of power and sort of authority was something that really, you know, excited me, you know, in a way, not to be, you know, an authoritarian person, you know, but it was more like, okay, that is a status, you know, this is something very respectable.

to do in terms of the art world.

So I think there was a little bit of that and a little bit of, you know, sort of a nurturing maternal instinct in sort of protecting the artists and sort of guiding through and helping them.

So it came from both sort of places.

I guess the part where I wanted to play a role was because the artists that I was mostly interested in were not being shown.

And I refused to believe that there were no artists.

I just believed that there was no market, you know, and that needed to be created.