The former Mogliano fly-half injured in the 2015 jihadist attack shielding his sister: “The oval ball inspires me in my installations, even in sport my approach was artistic. And the meeting with the physicist Giorgio Parisi made me take flight”
Until exactly ten years ago, 13 November 2015, Aristide Barraud’s life was that of a 26-year-old professional rugby player, trained in the French elite, a leading player for Mogliano in Serie A, one step away from even his first call-up to the blue team. Three Kalashnikov bullets fired by Islamic terrorists in front of the Bataclan, a club in Paris where he was with his sister and some friends, on the night of the jihadist attacks which caused the death of 132 people and hundreds of injuries, changed his fate. Barraud shielded his sister and risked dying, wounded in a lung, left thigh and calf, but he never gave up on life. Ten years later, the existence of the former rugby player is now that of an emerging artist and writer, with installations at the Center Pompidou, at Casa Italia during the Olympics, or inspired by the work of the Nobel Prize winner for physics Giorgio Parisi. The rebirth began with a monumental work in a ruined building in the banlieue, where he was born and raised, like some of the terrorists of 2015. “Only when the installation was completed – explains Barraud, met some time ago in Venice, where he lives – did I realize that that disused building represented my previous destroyed life. From there my work sprouted, made up of blow-ups, embroidered with phrases that I wrote on the walls and roofs of Paris after the attack.”
Not only did you not sink, as the title of your first book states (But I don’t sink, ed. Opera Incerta), but you were reborn in art and writing.
“Writing came early, even though before I wrote at most a few postcards to my grandparents. I started writing everywhere, even on the photos I took around the city. Then some more elaborate texts. But I already had everything inside, as family and friends told me. Today I know what art is and I realize that my approach was also artistic in sport, as a number 10, as a fly-half. Opening: an important word. I experience art in managing the rhythm, as in a match or a season, I guide the narrative, create teams, bring in characters, enhance talents, and put in the self-discipline of a professional rugby player.”
“I’m interested in being in the middle of the pitch and bringing the spectator to my side, to make him feel inside the action. From the outside it’s difficult to imagine the intensity and violence of the game.”
The beauty of his works sprouted from the horror of the attacks. After being installed in the ruined building, it took flight with the theories of the Nobel Prize winner in physics Giorgio Parisi.
“I had read his ‘In a flight of starlings’ (ed. Feltrinelli), and I was lucky enough to meet him in Rome. We talked about the collective strength that is created in the bond of individuals, as in flocks. I saw in it the metaphor of the closed scrum of rugby which is created in the balance of forces and reflects the bond between individuals within society. Thus, in collaboration with the artisans of the Maison Lesage of Chanel, I had thousands of starlings embroidered on vast light fabrics, involving thousands of people, creating a collective strength like in rugby. What is missing in our societies: we are losing faith in living and doing beautiful things together”.
It also brought thousands of people to the Center Pompidou square in Paris.
“In my first book I said that from the window of the hospital where I was convalescing I could see the construction site of Renzo Piano’s Palace of Justice, who when he found out about it gave me one of his books on the Pompidou. I studied his work, discovering how he understood the Center as a place of openness. As a fly-half I reinterpreted his idea for my installation, opening up to people the square where as a boy I played football with friends. I don’t know if he also came to draw something, but I sent him the my book on the work”.
And his new novel is on the way.
“It’s a story of friendship between two boys in three eras. Football is the common thread, set between the outskirts of Paris, passing through PSG, ending in Italy.”
By the way: he also spoke at Casa Italia during the Paris Olympics.
“The idea was to open it to the suburbs in an artistic way, exploiting the myth of the Olympic truce, capturing the moment of the Italian victories. We worked on the walls of Casa Italia, exalting the artistic gesture of the athlete, but also those of the suburbs, crossing two worlds, with kids from the suburbs and a team of talents of Italian and French origins. We broke the matrix, created bonds and life, even with improvised exhibitions in the suburbs and at Casa Italia.”
Such lightness is only possible when you have finished with your past life.
“After the attack I had no doubts about playing again. I pushed my strength to the limit, but when I realized that it wasn’t possible, I had no regrets: now I can watch a rugby match again, and even if it cost me a lot of mental and physical energy, I’m happy with this other life and the freedom it gives me. Every project starts from an idea. Then people have to be involved, as I did as number 10 with my teammates.”
At the trial on the attacks, did you look Salah Abdeslam in the face, the main defendant, the only surviving terrorist and sentenced to life imprisonment?
“I was asked to give my testimony. I went to court the day before, as I did as a player in stadiums I didn’t know. I didn’t need to look the defendants in the face. Mine was a challenge to myself. I wasn’t looking for the truth. My only truth is that my sister Alice and I survived and that what we do today is more important.”
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED