MARIANE IBRAHIM

Many people advised Mariane Ibrahim against opening a gallery. “There’s always these well-intentioned people saying, ‘get to know how things work first,’” she says over the phone from Paris. The Somali French art dealer had previously worked in marketing and the skeptics assumed she had a lot to learn before opening a successful art space. “But I knew what I wanted,” she says; in 2012, she founded M.I.A Gallery in Seattle, focusing on championing artists from countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Ibrahim has just landed at the airport and has little time to waste as she bundles herself into a taxi to head to a meeting. In 2019, she relocated the gallery to Chicago, renaming M.I.A (an acronym that stood for both “Missing in Art” and her maiden name, Mariane Ibrahim Abdi) to Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. In 2021, she opened a second spot in Paris and in 2023, her third in Mexico City. She now represents a roster of world-renowned artists, including the German-born Ghanaian textile artist Zohra Opoku, the Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo, British Liberian visual artist Lina Iris Viktor and the Ethiopian photographer Girma Berta.

Ibrahim points out that Seattle “wasn’t an easy place to start,” but played an integral role in founding the gallery. “There was no art market, no diversity in that city. Everything was about tech—Microsoft, Amazon, industries like that,” she explains. Seattle allowed her to focus on her goals without being “distracted by the art world”: “I wouldn’t say Seattle was the place where I found a community or success, but in some ways, that solitude was useful.” 

Ibrahim’s approach to the industry has been shaped by her upbringing. Born to Somali parents in Nouméa, New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific, her family returned to Somalia with her when she was five. In 1987, not long before the ongoing civil war broke out, her family moved to Bordeaux. She would later study communications at Middlesex University in London, remaining in the UK to work in marketing. 

Spending her formative years hopping between continents has encouraged Ibrahim to look beyond national or regional identities. “When it comes to this profession, or creative work, there should be no borders,” she says. “In my case, it was about caring for and bringing forward certain artists without marginalizing them—‘marginalized’ being a term I don’t like.” She points out that nobody should be forced to devalue themselves as a result of society’s biases: “How others treat you is on them, but how we treat ourselves and connect with art is noble, not marginalized.” 

Today, opening a gallery that focuses on artists in Africa and the Middle East would not be groundbreaking, but it was a different story a decade ago. Museums like the Tate, MoMA and the Louvre primarily showcased Western artists, and if non-Western ones were shown, they were often lumped together in group exhibitions or particular sections of the institutions, furthering entrenched ideas of otherness. “I knew I wanted to build a gallery that focused on African and African diaspora artists, but I was often told, ‘No, we don’t work with artists from that heritage,’” she says. “There was resistance, but I didn’t care. It was a mission—something I had to do. It wasn’t about being trendy or making a statement; it was just necessary.” 

Now artists from Africa, the Middle East and the diaspora are an integral part of the global art market. There are fairs focusing solely on African artists, such as 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, which travels to London, Marrakech and New York each year, and the past decade has also seen the rise of new art markets in places such as Lagos, Cairo and Dubai. 

Ibrahim herself is a significant figure in this shift, having worked to build a bridge between the art fairs and institutions and the artists themselves. Her decision to open galleries in Chicago and Mexico City, rather than in cities with established art markets, such as London and New York, was a deliberate act of defiance and part of an effort to seek out places that were more relevant to her mission, both professionally and personally. “I know New York is very international—I’ve lived in London, I’ve lived in Paris, so I understand that energy. But I felt like… I’m the second child in my family, so maybe it made sense to go to a ‘second city,’” she says of her decision to move to Chicago. “I received such an amazing welcome from the people. I’ve found the community I was looking for for a long time.” 

Ibrahim admires the Midwestern city “for its history, especially the presence and migration of Black Americans.” Chicago has a long legacy of being a hub for Black creativity, from the Great Migration, which brought many African Americans from the South to the city between 1916 and 1970, and cultural movements such as the Chicago Black Renaissance that paralleled the famous Harlem Renaissance. “I’ve always been fascinated by the level of excellence that Chicago has—without any pretension,” she says. 

Despite Paris being a well-established art capital, Ibrahim’s decision to open a gallery there wasn’t driven by prestige. After her success in Chicago, she felt she needed to bring what she had learned to one of her hometowns. “For me, going back to Paris felt like I’d been sent on a mission,” she says. “I felt that the knowledge and progress I had made in the US was something to be shared in France.”

Mexico City was perhaps the most unlikely location of the three spaces: Her desire to open shop stems from her experiences visiting the country on vacation. “Mexico was a place where I used to go out of frustration with Seattle not being a city of culture and antiquity,” she says. “I was going there to enjoy the architecture, the culture, the art.” It was only later that she recognized its potential. “I realized there were so many possibilities there,” she says. “You have these spaces that are Baroque or Brutalist, and I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be amazing to use that decor, that space, to present art?’”

Today, Ibrahim is an established figure in the art world, but she hasn’t forgotten how and why she got her start. She still feels that it has a long way to go before her industry is truly accepting of artists from Africa and the Middle East, and she has no intention of stopping or slowing down. “The question is: Can we focus on an artist’s aesthetic and intellect rather than just their Blackness?” she says as her taxi pulls up to her meeting. “I want to do this for as long as possible,” she says. “This isn’t a trend for me—it’s my life’s work.”

“It was a mission—something I had to do.
It wasn’t about being trendy or making a statement; it was just necessary.”