“I am an artist who loves to play with narratives,” Raphaël Barontini tells me. “I like to confront references from the history of art, switch the symbolics and use images which were problematic politically or historically, in another context.” The Paris-based collagist has a knack for re-framing the past, via a mixed media lexicon encompassing photography, screen printing, digital printing, painting, textiles and ink. The results are resplendent works of art – from flags, banners, tapestries to capes – expansive both in their dimensions and ability to captivate.

Interrogating the impact of slavery and colonisation on the cultures and individuals with which it intersects, Barontini looks to his Caribbean, European heritage and beyond, to uncover ancestral figures and stories often effaced from history’s dominant accounts. And his source material is nothing if not eclectic. “You see a little bit of Italian Renaissance, a little bit of antiquity, but at the same time, a lot of Vodou from Haiti and African references ranging from masks to sacred statues,” he says. “So yeah, it's a Creole vision, I would say.”

For a recent exhibition at the French capital’s Panthéon, he looked to images taken from a historical ethnological expedition. “They featured people having their picture taken because they were obliged to do so,” he explains, “as part of a physical inventory of people living in countries in Africa.” Barontini was determined to highlight the power that lived within the subjects even if, at the time, those they encountered had sought to mute it. “I was only using portraits where the people were proud or they had strong eyes, where they were almost noble.”

Such power is now being witnessed by audiences the world over, as Barontini’s work has embarked on exhibitions everywhere from San Francisco (Museum of African Diaspora) to Nottingham (The New Art Exchange Museum), biennials across multiple continents and a 2020 LVMH residency in Singapore. However, early 2025 will see one of his most monumental offerings to date – a solo exhibition at his home city’s iconic Palais de Tokyo. Below, he reveals its title, delves into the parts of him reflected in his work’s visual identity and how a year at art school in New York changed his practice indelibly.

Hi Raphaël! We heard you have a solo exhibition at The Palais de Tokyo on the horizon. Can you tell us more?
Yes! It will be a very important moment for me because it's my first major solo show in a Parisian institution. It’s very experimental. The title draws from an extract from a writer and politician from Martinique, in the Caribbean, named Aimé Césaire. He's a very renowned Caribbean writer in France. He was also a politician. And I took one sentence from a theatrical piece, which is called The Tragedy of the King Christophe about one of the Black generals [Henri Christophe] who took part in the enslaved people’s insurrection against the French. And he was a very interesting character because, at the same time, he was a freedom fighter but just after the independence of Haiti, he created a kingdom. So he named himself a king and created a court with a lot of different subjects. He was using the European codes of courts, but all the members were Black or mixed race. So that was a story that was really interesting for me because I am, myself, half Caribbean and Italian. And the title of the show is drawn from this piece. In English, it is, Somewhere In The Night, The People Dance.

How does Somewhere In The Night, The People Dance fit within the broader context of your artistry?
I selected the title because the show is a continuation of the show I just did a couple of months ago at the Panthéon in Paris, which was very important in my career. It was a [state] commission, so 100% of the pieces were new for the show. The National Monuments Centre in France contacted me, asking me if I would accept a commission to do a contemporary art exhibition on the memory of the struggles against slavery and the French Caribbean. It was a kind of new thing because, in France, the institutions are not so open to talk about those historical and political subjects in comparison to countries like the United States or even the UK. And so this commission was interesting for me because, as an artist, it was the first time that the work that I developed in painting and textiles could have an echo in real life to a very global audience. A lot of people who saw my show at the Panthéon didn't even know that the exhibition was on. They just discovered it on a visit to the monument.
So the Palais de Tokyo show is kind of a second act. I'm still working with this memory of struggle against slavery. And I was focused on imagining new ways to represent historical figures who were erased from the dominant history. So, for example, I really dug into the archives and the history books to discover figures, and mainly also women, who were very important in the Caribbean but totally erased. So, in a place like the Panthéon, I wanted to [spotlight] women who fought for their freedom and also against slavery.

What do you think the visual identity of your work reveals about you?
I think my visual identity says a lot about who I am and what I encountered when I was a young person. When I see my first paintings, from when I was a student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, frankly, it's fun because you see that the artistic intention is already there, but I just [honed] my practice thanks to experience. But my passion for textiles has been there since the beginning.

Also, when I was a child, I went very often to the Caribbean to see my family in Guadeloupe. And in Guadeloupe, I was witnessing all the traditions of carnival. And even my Italian roots, in a way, are very present in my work. For instance, the Palais de Tokyo show will be the first time where I will present a large series of costumes and within those costumes, you’ll find ritual capes that could be African or Caribbean, but also those which look like Gladiator costumes, containing more of a Roman antiquity reference.

Most kids draw pictures for fun, but for you, as a child, when did expressing yourself creatively start to feel like art?
When I was a child I was actually more interested in music, in percussion, and when I was around 16 and 17, I was part of a carnival band in the Parisian suburbs. In high school, I remember my art teacher telling me, at the end of my scholarship, ‘Damn, Raphaël, you should try at least to go to an art school.’ I was enjoying my drawing class, but I never thought I would be able to be an artist. And that's fun because thanks to this teacher, I did some applications and I was accepted in a preparatory class, so I spent a year in another public high school, in a small class where we were preparing for art schools. And after that, I was like, ‘Okay, why not? Let’s do an art school.’ I arrived in Paris at the Beaux-Arts School, which was completely insane for me because I grew up in a very working-class neighbourhood in Saint-Denis, in the north of Paris. I never thought I would be in the middle of Paris, just in front of the Louvre Museum, studying art in an amazing studio. So over the years, I enjoyed it more and more. It wasn’t like, ‘At 14, he was drawing so nice that he decided to be an artist.’

How did you find art school? Was it an environment you felt at ease in?
One of the biggest things I enjoyed as a student was the location because it was in the old academy, the one Napoleon created, so it’s a school where there was a real history. Even in its architecture. The library is like the Harry Potter library. So the place was amazing. I was in the centre of Paris, so I remember I had a free ticket for the Beaux-Arts. Another thing was that the school was really connected with other schools around the world. So, for example, I did a year in New York. I was at Hunter College on Park Avenue in New York. That was an amazing experience for me and I realised a lot of things when I was there.

Do you think having that international education experience has been quite fundamental in forming the artist you are today?
Completely. My year in New York was incredible because it had a huge impact on my practice. First of all because of the topics of my works. At that time, around 2008 and 2009, my teachers in Paris were not really into post-colonial questions.

So when I arrived in New York, I saw that a lot of institutions and museums were showing art scenes which were incredibly inspiring for me. I discovered the Studio Museum in Harlem which was showing and broadcasting the work of African-American artists that I loved. There were institutions like the Brooklyn Museum or the El Museo del Barrio, which was a museum on the Latino-American community.

I didn’t, at this time, see other institutions in France that were doing the same job. So it was inspiring for me because I was like, ‘Okay, if I see it in New York, we could have that in France.’ And, also, the [critiques] that I had from my teachers in Paris were completely inverted in New York. The first time I showed my work there to teachers and students, a lot of people were like, ‘Oh, wow, you have interesting work,’ and it prompted challenging discussions. So New York was really, really important in my career and my practice.
 
What type of viewing experience do you want to cultivate for those who consume what you do?
I would say that I’m not a conceptual artist. I think my work has very easy access. And because I love colour, I love bright materials, gold and silver, you can find many different kinds of very seductive things in it. So the first approach can be very open and easy. But when you think about it more, you can see more layers. And I like to have a space for the viewer that is very open. I think that’s why I'm comfortable with feedback from the public because I do my work also for the public. I'm not an artist who’s in the studio or working in intimate environments. I’m more at the carnival, in the parade with a lot of people – that's my intimacy.

Somewhere In The Night, The People Dance opens at Palais de Tokyo on February 21st 2025