Artists in Residence

Impossible to place in one category or another—and that's a good thing—Le Diouck, a fluid creature with green hair and a wandering mood, navigates between haunting hip-hop, modern soul, and electronic textures, playing with languages—English, French, and Wolof, since his family is Senegalese—and several instruments. Deliciously freed from all rules, the artist draws his inspiration from wherever it pleases him, obeying only his intuitive desires.

Thus, his music follows the contours of his soul in perpetual mutation, doomed to never repeat itself, but rather to take side roads to visit countries known only to him. His irresistible, sensual and hypnotic flow evokes an almost mystical approach to his art, committed and engaging. We are already ready to follow him anywhere. His recent feature on the song "Other Men" by Crystal Murray demonstrated the full extent of his talent and the strength of his artistic identity. 

From an early age, music has been part of her life. Having grown up to the sounds of Michael Jackson, Destiny's Child, the Fugees, or the Beach Boys, she had a first passion for hip-hop which she had been practicing since the age of 6. She is also sensitive to jazz, funk, rap, and spiritually to R&B. “This movement is not only musical, it is also clothing. It is a whole that has revolutionized the music industry,” she said.

Fashion is also one of her means of expression, “it's a new opportunity for disguise. I love originality, difference, and fashion gives us all that.” Born in Paris to Ivorian parents, Irina has rhythm in her blood and the world of music is hers, from producers to singers to beat makers. She has just made some music with her lifelong friend Le Diouck.

Laura began her directing career as an autodidact, surrounding herself with people who helped her in her apprenticeship, such as New Yorker Jaci Judelson—who has written and directed commercials, documentaries, campaigns, and television series—whom she greatly admires and who knew how to guide her in this profession, as a woman. She made her directorial debut with Maison Michel, the famous hat brand of Chanel, before setting out to conquer American brands such as Eric Schlösberg for which she produced a series of videos in 2015.

These earned her a nomination for Best Fashion Film at the Milan Fashion Film Festival. Her work includes documentaries (YSL Beauté with dance queen Badgyalcassiee), fashion commercials (Kitsuné with Chloé Cherry from the Euphoria series), and music videos for LaLa &ce, Izia Higelin, Bamao Yendé, Yassine Stein, or Black Coffee. Concerned about the right choice of her teams, essential according to her in the direction she wishes to instill in each of her projects, Laura Marciano is a real conductor who handles insolence brilliantly.

Born in Corsica in 1989, photographer Pierre-Ange Carlotti stood out for his work for the brand Vetements and designer Simon Porte Jaquemus. The Bachelor exhibition in 2017 confirmed his talent. His portraits—raw, melancholy—often have the hangover of the aftermath of drunkenness which we no longer know if it was euphoric or tragic. His imagination, where we can guess the influence of directors John Waters and Gaspard Noé, or photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, is expressed in a work oscillating between documentary and autobiography, between surges of sensual sap and melancholic drifts, wanderings nocturnal scenes and moments captured—never stolen, always complicit—with a delicacy that is not blinded by the recurring use of flash and close-ups.

A multidisciplinary artist, he also tried his hand at music with the release of his first rap opus entitled Spank you bitch. Looking at his photos, one thinks of the verses of Arthur Rimbaud:  “But, true, I cried too much! The dawns are heartbreaking, Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter. Acrid love swelled me with intoxicating torpor. O let my keel burst! O let me go to the sea!"

Jade Rabarivelo, 19, better known as Suki, is a multi-talented artist. Composer of intimate texts, singer with a sweet voice, and gifted musician, she delights her followers with her songs. Inspired as much by Stevie Wonder, whom she listened to as a child, as she is Lana Del Rey, AC/DC, Frank Ocean, HER, Charli XCX, or Kim Petras, she wants to impose no label on herself, to feel free to change her style according to her desires and her life experiences.

She released her first album in 2020, Blessing, alongside Jérémy Chatelain, followed a year later with Move On, co-produced by Brevin Kim. The next one will be signed by KCIV. Also a very noteworthy model, this daughter of a Franco-Polish woman and an American father with Malagasy origins multiplies the campaigns for Nodaleto of which she is muse, via Versace Jeans and most recently Miu Miu, orchestrated by the star stylist Lotta Volkova and shot by Tyrone Lebon. More than a fashion girl, Suki has talent in her blood. 

He worked with Seu Jorge or Eddy de Pretto. With his soaring pop, his charm, and the elegance of his features, the young French musician Sacha Rudy is a delight. He started music at age 5, with the piano, and five years later he was writing his first songs—while aspiring to make movies. In a hurry to create, he seized the opportunities offered by a computer to compose, again and again, while studying at the Conservatory—but careful to avoid high technicality, to favor instinctive, intuitive expression. Marked as much by the operas of Bizet as the melodies of the Beatles or Justice—his first “adult” concert, even if he was then only ten years old—his musical education shaped more than a style, but a musical personality apart in the Franco-French landscape. Traveler, contemplative, ultra-sensual, his music, twin (but not Siamese) of the work of James Blake offers him a seat in first class, in direction of a beautiful horizon. His immediate goals? “Make pop. Afterward, I may go for very radical productions.”

Originally from Cergy, William Essef, alias Bamao Yendé, is a multifaceted artist. As much a music producer as a DJ (better known as DJ Topless), this activist of the Parisian party has asserted himself within the YGRK collective—where music of all influences, graphic arts, multimedia, scenography, and interior design meet—before setting up his label Boukan Records and promoting bubbling atmospheres based on the hottest (Black) music produced in recent decades, in the Parisian capital.

Adored for his tracks, a mix of garage house, broken beat from Peckham (London district), kuduro, and batida, among others, we also owe him 55 Degrees, an EP recorded alongside his sidekick Le Diouck two years ago. This defender of raw and feverish electronic music, which knows no limits and with which he confronts the sounds, is a genius ambiancer. From the most underground clubs to the most important festivals, everywhere his projects are crowned with success.