JD: It’s great to cross paths with such encouraging teachers. How are specializations in Fine Arts created? Do you study lots of different disciplines, sculpture, drawing etc, or do you choose an art form from the start?

RB: The Beaux-Arts of Paris operate quite uniquely. There are approximately 25 workshops led by professional artists. The choices are made according to the sensitivity of each person, who goes towards a particular teacher or that artist. For my part, I really had the DNA of a painter, I loved printing techniques and in particular screen printing which I had been practicing for a long time. I knew very quickly that I wanted to be in a painter’s studio.

JD: Yet we don’t immediately think about painting
when we see your work.

RB: Yes because it is very multidisciplinary. Originally, I was interested in the history of painting, the history of representation. This is the reason why there are so many figures and portraits in my work: for all that it means historically.

JD: How did this project for the Pantheon come to you?

RB: Several years ago, I had started a series of portraits which included Caribbean figures who were relatively unknown in France, in France, and who had fought against slavery. There were also mixed-race personalities who had had a life and a certain recognition here in Paris in the 18th century. They ranged from the Chevalier Saint-Georges, a great composer, but also a swordsman, and harpsichord teacher to Marie-Antoinette, to Guillaume Guillon de Léthière, a great painter who remains little-known today. These are often profiles with a European father, planter or high-ranking official from France to the West Indies. They could be led to study military or artistic studies in Paris. My idea was to revive these figures.

The Center for National Monuments invited me to imagine an exhibition featuring these abolitionist and resistant figures within a monument so symbolic for the History of France, such as the Pantheon.

JD: How long did it take?

RB: I left school in 2010. It was between 2010 and 2015 that this aspect of my work developed.

JD: So you've been exploring this approach for almost 15 years, it's quite anchored...

RB: Afterwards, there is a second key moment: when I start making wearable parts. I was invited to do a residency with LVMH crafts in Singapore for six months, which ultimately became eight because of Covid. I come across the know-how of the artisans of this company, specialized in leather processing. The artist is invited to create pieces with the methodology and techniques of artisans. It was super interesting, a real dialogue between creators. Being in contact with craftsmen who are used to making accessories through their know-how and also the material quality of the leather directed me towards wearable pieces.

JD: Exactly, seeing all these materials, the textiles you use, I wondered what your relationship was with fashion? You also do parades - does the subject interest you?

RB: That interests me. I don't know, maybe I have an obsession with the human body, its presence. I just find my portable pictorial pieces activated. For example, recently I imagined a performance for La Nuit Blanche in Paris with professional hip-hop dancers and two carnival groups. My studio created 80 costumes.

JD: So good.

RB: It was great to see them live, wake up. I like both, I like when portable pieces become sculptures but I also like when they are in movement, when they come to life.

JD: Was the Pantheon just after the residency?

RB: It was three years later. There was a big design phase. We had to do sketch-ups in 3D, the project was special because in a monument, we could hardly touch anything, hang anything.

JD: They don’t often give carte blanche to the Pantheon?

RB: No, it’s rare. I think it was the third time. JR had done a big installation several years ago. It was a special request from the CMN to imagine a memorial project on the history of the struggles against slavery and its abolition thanks to a contemporary intervention by an artist.

JD: Your work will soon be visible at the Palais de Tokyo?

RB: Exactly, this is the big project that has been driving me for several months. The exhibition opens on February 20. It's a mix of existing works and pieces I'm currently creating. What's funny is that I'm at a point in my career where I'm still considered an emerging artist but I'm already being offered retrospective exhibitions. There will be a few pieces from the Pantheon that will be reinstalled, notably textile pieces, but I still have quite a few productions to create.

JD: Are there any in the workshop?

RB: Indeed, these costumes will be on display. We will create some new costumes but there will also be paintings borrowed from private collectors.

JD: A real retrospective... Are there artists who inspire you, whose work you would like to share?

RB: I look at abstract painting a lot, which often surprises people because my work is mostly figurative. I'm thinking of an African-American artist called Sam Gilliam who makes very large textile pieces with completely abstract paint, he plays on the theatricality of the textile, its folds and its presence.

JD: How did you discover it?

RB: I discovered him in the United States because his work is not widely distributed in France. There are collage artists like Romare Bearden or Jacob Lawrence who are almost not known here, but who mean a lot to me because they are precisely in this practice of collage, in publishing. Romare Bearden is an artist that I adore, his work is very poetic. He also looks a lot at the history of painting, there are both photos and things diluted in ink, it's very dreamlike.




Courtesy of the artist

and Mariane Ibrahim Chicago, Paris and Mexico City.