La Mer, is the new nomadic and multidisciplinary fair launched in Marseille, first landed in Singapore and now en route, heading to Aspen (Colorado). We discussed it in the previous article and here we interview the founder Becca Hoffman, and the Marseille-based curator, Armelle Dakouo. Becca Hoffman is the director of 74tharts, an international organization with the aim of redefining the traditional fair model.
Interview with the founder Becca Hoffman, the background
“I managed art galleries for a dozen years in New York, Paris, and London. The last one was the Andrew Edlin Gallery in 2011 in New York, when it bought the Outsider Art Fair. I renovated it and discovered my passion for organizing city cultural events and offering people a platform.
I contributed to creating the Outsider Art Fair Paris, launched in 2013 and hosted in a hotel in the 8th arrondissement. I collaborated with the Outsider Art Fair until the beginning of the pandemic. Then I started working for two other art fairs in the United States.”
A nomadic fair for a world within reach
“We will never be in a New York, Paris, London, Los Angeles. We want to support cities that have new energies and creative communities. We want to give a platform to all of this. We believe that creativity does not reside only on walls, in clothes, in chairs, in design, or in food. It is everything. So last year we were in Vienna and Milan. This spring we were in Singapore. The South of France has changed radically after the pandemic.”
Why Marseille?
Its doors are opening. It is the moment of change. It is the Berlin of 15 years ago. There is a sense of opportunity, warmth, rawness, energy, difficulty, but also beauty. We will start from here. And every year we will move to a new city in the south of France to tell a story, Arles, Nice, Nîmes.
Was Nomad an inspiration or is it in opposition?
“I do not want to be in opposition or things like that. I want to create different forms of stories and I think it is important to be able to connect people in a new way. Answer a question: what do we want to achieve from this experience and how do we want to think differently? I discovered a city through someone else’s eyes”.
Are there collectors who support you?
Many, it is like a small community. We work with galleries, with curators who exhibit artists, so it is a hybrid model. We have the opportunity to open the doors in Aspen: the Hotel Jerome.
The interesting thing, from an economic point of view, is the difference between producing an event in a cutting-edge, aware, and structured city that desires a certain “package” of art, and creating an event in a city that is enthusiastic about creativity, that desires something new.
What is your background, in terms of contacts in different countries?
I have a great desire to travel. I discover and experience the world by immersing myself in communities scattered across the globe. I have traveled a lot, from Bhutan to Sri Lanka, from Cebu to the Ivory Coast, from Senegal to Zanzibar, passing through all of Europe, Panama, and the list could go on. I just think there is not enough recognition for multiple creative communities. So we offer them that missing platform. The other day I was talking to someone who asked me: have you ever thought of doing something like this in Cambodia? I replied: great idea, why not?
https://www.74tharts.com/projects/la-mer
Interview with the curator Armelle Dakouo – former artistic director of the Parisian fair AKAA, Also Known as Africa
When talking about the Mediterranean, there are many perceptions and imaginary notions to play with: the territory, the landscape, displacement, immigration, but it is also the beauty of influence, the artistic influence that is felt in the Mediterranean, in all the surrounding countries. So the sea is the starting point. Then all the windows open that can lead to different types of dialogue with artists from all over the world.
The transfer to Marseille and the background
I have lived here for four years. Before, I lived in Paris for four years. Before that, I was in Africa, in Casablanca, Morocco, and in Dakar, Senegal. But I am half Burkinabé and half French. I returned to France eight years ago, first to Paris, we had no other choice. Because that’s where everything was. We already wanted to move to Marseille. But it was 2017: at that time there were no jobs in the artistic and cultural sector.
What other projects have you created in the last years?
I left my previous job. I was the artistic director of the Also Known as Africa fair for 7 years. I worked for the fair for nine years, if I count the period when I was their consultant.
I have always had a parallel project. Because, for years, I was already working on a project created with artists from Dakar, Casablanca, Morocco, and all of West Africa. So my expertise mainly concerns artists from the African continent. Marseille is the open door to Africa. The fair has 8 galleries and 11 curators, 3 from New York, 2 from Paris.
Other projects you are working on?
I just returned from Guadeloupe. I might go to Benin, to Cotonou, at the end of summer. In September, I will go to the São Paulo Biennial, in Brazil. And this is the kind of connections I want to work on. I am also involved as a curator in the Photo SAC Biennial of Ouagadougou. It is a Biennial dedicated to photography in Ouagadougou, where I was born. I am working with the photographer from Burkina Faso Adrien Bitibaly for a project that will take place in November of this year.
Marseille, a bull market
“There are collectors and wealthy people here and, in general, in the surroundings of Marseille.”
There is the Luberon, there is Halle… it is true that many people buy in Paris. In Marseille, there is already another art fair at the end of August Art o rama, but it is more institutional because there are many stands with conceptual works and installations. So, it is another way to highlight the artists. The word is spreading about La Mer, people already know that Marseille has a new art fair. That is the point. Moreover, it is also an interesting moment because we are just after Basel and just before Les Rencontres d’Arles. In this triangle of space and time, many people come from Europe, but also from the United States, they have their homes around here, the moment is perfect“.
The collaboration with the city’s museum network
“We have an exhibition project at La Friche Belle de Mer. We are organizing a musical performance on the occasion of Ali Cherri’s exhibition at the MAC with the Atmaten Quintet. It is a quintet from Beirut, Lebanon. They are inspired by Fairuz, a famous Lebanese singer-songwriter who has influenced the entire Middle East and Africa. We have organized a talk with Lara Tabet, resident at the Fondazione Camargo, an organization 30 minutes from here, founded by an American artist.”
She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.
