Portrait of Pam Grier

A burst of color may already have caught your eye on the right. Unexpectedly, the underground entrance to the shopping center reveals a work by Raf Urban, a French stencil artist born in 1971. Deeply influenced by the hip-hop culture of the 1980s, he is now recognized internationally, from Paris and London to Rome and New York.

Using a multilayered stencil technique refined over many years, Raf Urban creates vivid faces that carry messages of inclusion, hope, and tolerance. The face looking back at you is Pam Grier, the African American actress born in 1949. A major figure in popular culture, she became known as the queen of blaxploitation cinema in the 1970s through cult films such as Coffy and Foxy Brown.

She also became one of the first Black female action heroes in American cinema, before Quentin Tarantino brought her back into the spotlight in Jackie Brown in 1997. By honoring her on this wall in Lorient, Raf Urban chose his subject deliberately. Through the eyes of a pioneer who opened the way for generations of African American artists, he celebrates tolerance.