Out of Chaos, Painter Jaouad Bentama Finds Joy
Jaouad Bentama keeps apologizing for the heat. He’s invited me to look at new works in his studio in the basement of Mana Contemporary, a former Tobacco factory turned hybrid cultural arts space where visitors can simultaneously view art like the works of Andy Warhol’s original silkscreens and rub shoulders with resident artists like Bentama. But each time he secures one acrylic painting to the wall and goes to collect another, the tape peels, sending the painting crashing to the floor.
Though usually peaceful, his studio demands creative engagement from those who enter it. The floor shows evidence of hard work and is decorated by squares and rectangles of color from a canvas once lying between the lines. Between works completed and those in progress, even a box of latex gloves next to a pile of new brushes looks curated and ready for observation. There is a black futon with specks of paint from past projects on the lower cushions and a small white pillow for Bentama to use if he needs to stay the night. Beneath it are stacks of stretched canvases and a balled-up red and black plaid shirt. What looks like a pile of blankets is actually more paintings on folded canvas. On a table with paints and mixing materials are half-empty Gatorade and Aquafina bottles, leaving me to question which one belongs to me.
“People see me as ‘the Mickey Guy,’ and I’m not,” he says, referencing his found-object art, which thrust him to global notoriety and prompted exhibitions in Paris, New York, L.A. and Casablanca. “They put so much pressure on me because of those,” pointing to three multi-dimensional paintings—each depicting a literal Mickey Mouse plush coated in paint affixed to the center of the canvas—hung in a row. “You have to separate yourself.”
Though he is best known for the Mickey collection, Bentama, 41, admits it was mostly misunderstood. Art is not about the design but “the meaning of life. Mickey represents the sadness of a kid.” The Mickeys were all unique and meaningful—they are found objects, often given to him by the person who commissioned the painting. Most people didn’t get it because, yes, upon first inspection, it’s easy to dismiss the Mickey collection as no different from the mass-production art of so many gimmicky artists. “They just see a Mickey in the middle of a canvas. Oh, it’s cool. I love it. I’m gonna buy it. And it destroyed me.”
But the success of the Mickeys led to more gratifying projects like a special limited-edition jersey line with Umbro in 2021. A framed jersey, with its vibrant puzzle-shaped designs, leans against the white brick wall of his studio. That collaboration debuted at a show in Paris, sparking critical acclaim. “I got so much love. I was not expecting that.” The French television network TV5Monde interviewed Paris-born Bentama, and Les Inrockuptibles, one of France’s most famous magazines, included him in a publication. Le Petit Journal New York named him one of their men of the month. He was encouraged to accept the perks of being picked up in nice cars and taken to lavish restaurants. “It’s like you’re living a dream awake.” A far cry from his early life in New York City, some of it spent homeless.
Making it
I arrive at the garden of Ladurée Soho to find Bentama and three pastel macaroons on a plate. He’s wearing his everyday fall wardrobe: black joggers and peacoat, white sneakers and a glittering watch around his wrist, only visible when he drinks his espresso. The son of Moroccan immigrants, Bentama was 29 when he moved to New York City from Paris in 2012. Because he did not have traditional art training, he was encouraged by other artists to paint for people in Washington Square Park. He arrived in the city with nowhere to live and spoke little English, and his first few weeks were spent living in a hostel on 20th Street in Chelsea, where he paid $45 a night. But he soon found himself out on the street for nearly a month in the winter, sleeping on the 6 train and in the heated ATM lobby of a Bank of America on 28th Street. “It was intense.” Eventually, he found an apartment on Sullivan in Soho, a mere block from Ladurée, and moved in with a priest.
He found steady work at a French Bistrot in the Meatpacking District, where we first met. (Full disclosure: We’re friends.) I was a struggling actress working as a hostess and he was serving, trying to learn English and pursue his art, and I remember his playful demeanor and compassion. It was around this time that he started looking for his home in art collectives. The artists at Brooklyn Collective, he remembers, were unkind. “I did not feel welcome.” It was only when he found Bowery Union that he felt more welcome. There he met new friends: comic book artist Ian Bertram, muralist Shaun Lee, collage artist Boris Bernard and performance artist Sofia Saleh. “One day, I woke up speaking English.”
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He told me he’d walk into New York City hotels asking them to do installations of his work. “I knew my painting was very powerful.” Soon his art was in popular hotels like The Standard and The Gansevoort. Today, he says, his work has appeared in over a dozen hotels. “I wanted my art to be seen—not to be sold but to be seen,” he tells me. It took him four years to get into the gallery spaces, but he didn’t want to be boxed in. “I didn’t want my art to be seen as decoration. I want my art to be seen like a book. I want you to read it to feel something; I want to give you an emotion.”
Two little boys, maybe seven or eight years old, interrupt us at our table, holding clipboards and asking for donations to support their sports teams. We can’t tell if they have parents nearby. One boy tells Bentama, who is pulling out a five-dollar bill from his wallet, to give them money separately as they aren’t on the same team. Bentama laughs at the boys’ request and says he’ll only give them money if they split it. The boys take the money and leave.
Bentama reminds me that the proceeds from his Umbro collection went to the Robert Debré Association, which helps hospitalized children. “It was not for me and my pocket,” he says. “As an artist, I wanted to give back that beautiful journey. I wanted to give it back to those kids.” The Umbro show in Paris comes up repeatedly in our conversation. It was after that show that life started to change for him. “It’s not just a dream; you’re making it,” he says. “And I felt like I was on the top of the hill, but I did not protect myself.” Success was almost too good to be true, and he started to worry that something would happen to take it all away.
The accident
“I was born twice,” he tells me. The first time was on December 11, 1982, and the second was on December 29, 2021, when a truck hit him while he was riding a scooter in Tulum, Mexico. After he fell off the scooter, a motorcycle drove over him, crushing his upper body. He was in a coma for nearly twenty-four hours before waking up to learn that he’d broken forty bones. He’d broken just his hand in eighteen or nineteen places.
“Every day, I was ready to die, and that feeling is beautiful and horrible.” He remembers hearing doctors and family members talk about the possibility of his not surviving. He wished he’d had more protection from the anticipation of death, and for the first ten days, he focused on simply trying to stay awake and alive.
“You remember who you love, who you were kind to, and you want to apologize to everyone you know. You just want to make peace.”
Doctors told him he needed two surgeries. “I got from the light to the chaos, and to be honest with you, I was down in all aspects.” In total, he spent four weeks in the hospital and three additional weeks in inpatient recovery. “I was not supposed to walk. I was supposed to be handicapped.”
“Forever?” I ask.
“For my life,” he answers and points to his waist, where screws have been placed. Determined to walk, he asked his brother to help him once he was out of the hospital. And he did learn to walk, though, for a while, it was with a cane.
He arrived back in New York in late February of 2022, angry and looking for meaning. His hand, the most important part of him, was “handicapped.” He started physical therapy. “It was not easy. And slowly, I saw something inside me changing. The more you change, the more your vision, your art and your world start changing.” He wanted to make a small sculpture for fun. When he returned to his studio, he said he didn’t recognize himself in his art.
Soon after the accident, another big brand—not Umbro or anything related to sport this time—asked to collaborate, but he was scared. The accident had changed him mentally, physically and spiritually. “I’m not the same. I have the feeling of myself before, but today I can’t even remember who I was.”
The future
Back in the studio, Bentama turns a fan on to help move some of the hot air into the hallway. I spot the first paintings made following the accident: thick black slashes of paint on a white canvas. He says he was in pain and unhappy. “I couldn’t recognize my own body.” On one canvas, a trickle of teal paint peaks beneath the slashes of black. In another beside it, a hint of yellow. But these are not the works he intended to show me. Instead, he sets two large abstract paintings next to each other on the floor. He tells me the inspiration for his newest work came after he awoke from his coma.
The paintings are an ode to the kaleidoscope of colors on his mother’s scarf and its movement in the wind. Life after death meant putting more color in his art and remembering who he was first: a painter.
When he felt himself in the grip of death, he had a vision of that scarf. “I saw death, but death did not want to take me. And I saw that beautiful scarf on my mom. It’s like I took it to take me back to life and have this in my mind.”
I ask him if he ever feels lonely after experiencing something so unusual. Yes, he feels lonely, but he knows “you have to experience the real chaos in your life to enjoy it,” he says. “Nothing can destroy me.”
Three years following his accident, Bentama tells me that he is not the same person, but in a “good, beautiful way.” He feels at peace and has become more spiritual and connected, free from anger. “The accident was kind of a gift.”
His career has since flourished with exhibitions at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Le Molière in Paris and a ten-month installation at The Peninsula New York Hotel. And earlier this month, his artwork landed in the private collection of Tiffany & Co. Saudi Arabia and Bangkok.