“What is cultural mixing if not the unpredictability of encounter?

The renewal of forms through blending? Artists are mixed by nature. They absorb a multiplicity of sensations, knowledge, and techniques, opening themselves to all kinds of exploration to create the unexpected. In this sense, the Louvre is a place where worlds coexist in constellations. Worlds that sometimes arise from the clash of cultures in the violence of colonialism, slavery, and hierarchies. In this sense, cultural mixing cannot be a smokescreen to mask these realities, but it must first open us to the experience of the Other, allow us to recognize otherness within ourselves, and be the missing link.

” Thanks to this carte blanche at the Louvre, and in the presence of artist friends who will walk with me through the museum’s collections, I wish to engage in a dialogue with the artworks through words and music, to celebrate our shared humanity, and to poetically explore our vibrant, uninhibited, ever-changing, and multifaceted identities. – Gaël Faye