‘I just wanted people’s attention’: dealer Mariane Ibrahim on championing young artists of the African diaspora
Ahead of her debut at Art Basel in Miami Beach, the Chicago-based gallerist walks us through her journey.
We meet at Paris Photo, where the now Chicago-based dealer is exhibiting self-portraits by Ayana V. Jackson, but Ibrahim says becoming an art dealer was never part of the plan.
A year of firsts
Ibrahim’s new Chicago outpost will not see her schedule slowing down. The yellow-painted stand she will devote to Amoako Boafo at her debut Art Basel in Miami Beach this month concludes a cycle of solo events, paving the way for a series of group shows, one of which will be of Afro-Brazilian artists with an outside curator for the first time.
This has been a year of firsts for the gallery, with debut participations at Fiac and Paris Photo, and in March she will take part in her first Arco Madrid. Next year is “all planned out”, which, Ibrahim says, “gives me the opportunity to broaden my horizons”—she wants to travel, to go to Japan, but also “spice things up more”, set the cat among the art world pigeons. As Ibrahim says, “I like the idea of being everywhere and nowhere.”