Chicago’s Mariane Ibrahim Gallery Plans New Location in Paris, Expanding Reach for Art from the African Diaspora

Two years after moving her fast-ascending gallery from Seattle to Chicago, Mariane Ibrahim will open a new location of her namesake enterprise in Paris with plans to further her focus on art from the African diaspora. The second location will welcome visitors in September to an inaugural group show in a renovated three-story space on Avenue Matignon in a 19th-century Hausmann building in Paris’s 8th arrondissement.

The move marks a homecoming of sorts for a dealer who grew up in Somalia and France before leaving Paris for the United States in 2010. But it counts as a surprise, even to Ibrahim herself. “When I left, Paris was not a place where I felt fulfilled when it comes to different voices and diversity in art,” she told ARTnews. “I had given up on it. If you would have asked me three years ago, I would have said, ‘Whatever.'”