

In 2023, his work was hung in the Pantheon, in Paris. In 2024, he took part in the Nuit Blanche (an all-night event) with a parade, and the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, offered him a solo exhibition. Today, he occupies part of the Palais de Tokyo. Later in the year, he will be invited to the Louvre-Lens in northern France and the Louvre Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. To say the least, Raphaël Barontini keeps busy. He has now established his subjects and his style.
His subjects are most often taken from the history of his family's native region, the French West Indies: the slave trade, plantations and resistance by enslaved populations. The title of his exhibition, "Quelque part dans la nuit, le peuple danse" ("Somewhere in the Night, the People Dance"), refers to Aimé Césaire's play La Tragédie du Roi Christophe (The Tragedy of King Christophe), published in 1963. Barontini doesn't follow it word for word but slips in many allusions to Henri Christophe (1767-1820), who was one of Haiti's liberators before proclaiming himself king of the northern half of the island in 1811 and committing suicide when he saw himself defeated.
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