Born 1967, Guadeloupe. Lives and works in Paris.

Jay Ramier explores his West Indie roots and the representation of the African diaspora.

A few years after his arrival in Paris, Jay Ramier and his collective BadBC initiated the undefined territory of Stalingrad, an anti-museum known to have been at the core of hip-hop in Europe in the early 1980s. Jay One was distinguished by his New York style characterised by cryptic, danscing letters, accompanied by B-Boys– angular figures who represented the Zulu drawls of the time– while referring to gestures linked to the history of slavery.

Working both in the public space and the studio– illegally and officially– Jay Ramier has notably exhibited on the palisades of the Louvre, on the Berlin Wall before its fall, at the agnès b galerie du jour (Paris, 1990), at the Musée National des monuments français (Paris, 1991), at Alife (New York, 2001), Kunstraum Kreuzberg (Berlin 2003), (Grand Palais (Paris, 2006, 2009), the “off” programme of the Venice Biennale (2015), and the Philharmonie (La Villette, Paris, 2021).

Author of logos, visuals and music videos for the hip-hop industry, Jay Ramier is the artistic director of the magazine AFRIKADAA. Member of the music group Outlines, and co-author of the book Mouvement – du terrain vague au dancefloor, 1984-89 (published by Le Mot Et le Reste, 2017), Jay Ramier founded BProject, a physical and virtual travelling exhibition space that allows the artist to work collectively and participatively in specific territories and contexts. He is represented by the gallery Raouan Moussion (Paris).