He is influenced by processes of creolization and the philosophies of French Caribbean thinkers. He intentionally depicts real and imaginative heroes from Africa and the Caribbean to present narratives that are under-represented in the dominant history of art. Barontini’s installations become site specific, and his works draw attention to architecture by obscuring its legibility and orthodox arrangement, while reconstructing and sharing a sort of counter-history.

Recalling tapestry and large genre scenes common in history painting, Barontini’s large textile collages present a fantasized fresco that echoes with images and sounds of the "Whole-World". Those of which hint to millenary layers of cultural references, such as the city with three names: Istanbul. The rich and dense history of the city located at the crossroads of worlds and peoples was a major inspiration in the production of this new body of works.

Coming from everywhere, a place that we do not know or a space that does not exist yet, the portraits of Raphaël Barontini form a corpus of hybrid figures summoning mixed images and references. The gallery will become the landing runway of pictorial comets, traces of a future under construction.

Raphaël Barontini’s first solo show in Turkey opened at The Pill in January 2018, transforming the gallery space with a large-scale site-specific textile installation and a body of new paintings. The environment proposed by the artist will be accompanied by a sound piece co-produced with New-York based musician and rapper Mike Ladd.