Rima Abdul Malak, cultural adviser to Emmanuel Macron, was appointed Minister of Culture on Friday to replace Roselyne Bachelot, announced the secretary general of the Elysee Palace Alexis Kohler.
He is a shadow personality who appears in full light. Culture and Communication Advisor to the President of the Republic since December 2019, Rima Abdul Malak has been appointed Minister of Culture to replace Roselyne Bachelot. Born in Lebanon in 1979, this 43-year-old Franco-Lebanese has an atypical career. Former director of the association Clowns sans frontières from 2001 to 2005, she joined the town hall of Paris in 2008 to become the director of the cabinet of the Assistant for Culture Christophe Girard, before being cultural adviser to the Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe. Rima Abdul-Malak also directed the music department of the French Institute from 2007 to 2008. She will then be cultural attaché, head of the visual arts and performance department of the cultural service of the French Embassy in New York from 2014 to 2018. , then, since 2019, Emmanuel Macron’s “culture and communication” adviser.
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“She has dedicated her whole life to art,” one of her colleagues at the mayor of Paris, Gaspard Gantzer, former adviser to President François Hollande, told AFP. “She is a cultured, intelligent woman with great artistic sensitivity”, who has “an unconditional love for artists, authors, performers”.
For Bruno Julliard, former first deputy to the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, who has known Rima Abdul Malak for ten years, “he is someone who has an exceptional work force, a capacity for commitment and extraordinary investment. “She has a real vision of a cultural policy”, with “leftist” and “progressive” convictions, and “a high ambition for cultural democratization, which for her does not mean leveling down”, continues- he.
Rima Abdul Malak has also worked with cultural associations supported by the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD), in the Palestinian territories. This Arabic speaker, who speaks fluent English, is a graduate of Sciences Po Lyon and Lyon-II University (contemporary Arab world specialty), and holds a DESS in Development and International Cooperation. She is unmarried and has no children.