"Art Fair, Marrakech, La Mamounia, 11h30, stand de la galerie suisse Foreign Agent.
It was at this place and exact moment that I fell in love with the work of artist Nicolas Lambelet Coleman. It was in front of his self-portrait - which resembles my dad so much on vacation - that I made my most beautiful discovery of the fair. Nicolas Coleman is a 25-year-old American-Swiss man based in New York. Born in the southern United States and from a mixed union, this artist explores issues of identity in his pictorial creations and appropriates his image through his self-portraits. Considered a contemporary African artist, Nicolas Coleman differs from artists in this category by using color reminiscent of the work of the French painter Matisse. In his work, he has developed a rich, colorful, and distinctive visual language. He completely immerses himself in his creations, thus forcing visitors to collide with the image he has of himself. Here, he positions himself as a stranger on lands of his own continent. In his series "A Stranger in Morocco," presented by the Swiss art gallery Foreign Agent, he portrays himself in a jacket in the city of Tangier, which he represents through his use of color and precision of material in his renditions of objects that give the audience the sensation of traveling alongside him. Nicolas Coleman goes far away, as a tourist, sometimes accompanied, sometimes alone. He questions his existence, the place of the black man in contemporary American society, and puts humanity at the center of reflections. An artist to keep an eye on."
