2023-12-18 12:01:14
Paris (AFP) – “Persevere and not let yourself be determined by your family or social environment”: this is the motto of Baye-Dam Cissé, alias Rakajoo, 37, a fierce self-taught boxer and painter, to whom the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, dedicates a first solo exhibition.
Published on: 12/18/2023 – 1:01 p.m. Modified on: 12/18/2023 – 12:58 p.m.
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Around ten colorful, figurative and allegorical canvases, with a confident style, mix characters and urban living spaces, integrating animated images. They sit alongside boards from his first comic book “Entre les cordons”, to be published by Casterman, and portraits, including that of his mother, who died in 2019.
A “temporal and geographical life journey, in which everyone must be able to find their own references”, explains to AFP this thirty-year-old born in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), who encountered a number of obstacles .
His nickname, Rakajoo, mule head in Wolof (Senegalese language), “suits him well” because “everything is accessible to those who really want it”, he says in a calm voice at Boxing Beats, a boxing club in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) where he trains daily for the French English boxing championships.
Discovered “by chance”, it became his “temple of the spirit”, with “the Sacré-Coeur, the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay” where he went “for free” as a teenager to “liberate his spirit “.
At 9 years old, Rakajoo, who draws “all the time”, landed with her mother, her brother and her sister in a “24 m2” accommodation in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, following an expulsion from Seine-Saint-Denis.
Often outside, he goes “to see the painters of Montmartre and the museums, is passionate about painting”, but he is also “very angry” and does not “understand” why his family lives in these conditions, “with drug addicts in the stairwell and (his) mother who sends all her money to the country,” he remembers.
“Black French”
In 3rd year, he wanted to move towards applied arts, he was advised to “draw electronic circuits”. After a “technological baccalaureate”, he still encountered refusals. Going to art school is “too expensive”.
“I refused to submit to the choices of others so I took charge of myself,” continues the man whom those close to him describe as “curious”, “perfectionist” and “incredibly perseverant”.
At Boxing Beats, he “channeled (his) anger” and “learned to discipline (himself) by going to the end of things”.
French painter and boxer Baye-Dam Cissé, aka Rakajoo, in his boxing club in Aubervilliers in Seine-Saint-Denis, December 14, 2023 © JOEL SAGET / AFP
It was his “mentor and trainer”, Saïd Bennajem (who was Sarah Ourahmoune, silver medalist at the Rio Olympics in 2016), who gave him his very first painting commission in 2007: a fresco on boxing for the room. “I was able to project myself beyond the ring by spreading out on the walls”, a space dominated by red and black, where his portrait of the icon Mohamed Ali stands out.
This project, financed by the Arnaud Lagardère foundation, propelled him into the world of work: the animated film then a start-up of mobile game applications that he founded but in which he did not recognize himself.
At the same time, determined to persevere in painting, he reconnected with Senegal, the country of his ancestors but where he was considered “like a white guy, with his ass between two chairs”. In Paris, he regrets, where he organizes exhibitions with a collective, “Black French, neither African from Africa, nor Afro-American, (he) does not fit into the boxes of the art world either institutional”.
Kourtrajmé, Ladj Ly and JR
His salvation will come from the Kourtrajmé school (short film in verlan), founded by the director Ladj Ly in Montfermeil (Seine-Saint-Denis), where he joins the “art and images” section created by the street artist JR.
This quick and free training aimed at young talents who have not had access to higher education schools gives rise to “the essential thing: a feeling of belonging to a collective history”, he says.
French painter and boxer Baye-Dam Cissé, aka Rakajoo, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, December 14, 2023 © JOEL SAGET / AFP
Exhibited with the school at the Palais de Tokyo, where he painted on “police violence”, he was spotted by gallery owner Magda Danysz, a leading figure in contemporary and urban art, who offered to represent him.
Today, Rakajoo says she makes a living from her art and has found “balance”.
He dreams of founding in Senegal “a sanctuary with animals, which is also a protected educational space”.
© 2023 AFP
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