Raphaël Barontini
Somewhere in the Night, the People Dance

[En anglais]

"It’s one thing when black people aren’t discussed in world history ... But when, even in the imaginary future—a space where the mind can stretch beyond the Milky Way to envision routine space travel, cuddly space animals, talking apes, and time machines—people can’t fathom a person of non-Euro descent a hundred years into the future, a cosmic foot has to be put down."1 1  - Ytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2013), 7.

These words by the American futurist and filmmaker Ytasha L. Womack resonate deeply with the French artist Raphaël Barontini’s practice. Womack’s critique highlights a profound issue in cultural representation: although the absence of Black people from historical narratives is problematic, the erasure becomes even more stark in speculative spaces. Even in imaginative realms that can conceive of fantastical futures—with interstellar travel, talking animals, and time manipulation—the inability to envision non-white protagonists represents a profound failure of creative imagination.