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As I continue to develop Bob Clark Beyond into a platform of connectivity and creativity, I’ll start highlighting an inspiration of the month – dedicated to a person or place that is worth knowing more about. There’s no better person to start with than my friend and gallerist, Mariane Ibrahim, who has just opened her third gallery in Mexico City.

Ibrahim was born to Somali parents in New Caledonia but grew up largely in France, and studied advertising before she entered into the art world.

She showcases prominent international artists of the African diaspora through the Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, and has been a rising-star in the field for the past few years. Ibrahim moved her shop to Chicago from Seattle after realizing that the narratives and ideas around race, movement, identity, and creative expression she wanted to highlight in her shows were closely connected to the city’s history and culture. She also has a gallery in Paris.

2022 marked Mariane Ibrahim’s tenth year of operation. As Mexico City continues to raise its artistic profile, Ibrahim has now expanded into this new global art destination (just in time for the city’s Zona Maco art fair).

I’m a big fan of the artists that Ibrahim showcases and many of their works of art are in the Clark Collection, including Amoako Boafo, Ayana V. Jackson, and Clotilde Jiménez. Jiménez has lived and worked in Mexico City for the past five years, and Ibrahim’s inaugural show will be a new series of his collage paintings, murals and ceramics.

“There is no other city like Mexico City in the Americas that brings together the ancient, cultural, and contemporary. The result of this combination, of tradition and modernity, offers all ingredients an artist needs, a platform for creativity. The Mexico City art scene has been bursting, this extension is complementary to our existing platforms, Chicago and Paris, more so to create a proximity with the Hispanic descent creatives,” Mariane Ibrahim shared recently.

If you are in Mexico City, I highly recommend that you visit this new gallery. I look forward to discovering more new artists through it and seeing the impact that it will have on the city’s art community.

Read more about Mariane Ibrahim’s new gallery opening in the Wall Street Journal.