Founded in 2014 by entrepreneur and public relations consultant Goudet Abalé, NEUVIÈME TOIT is a multidisciplinary collective of young francophone artists in the fields of painting, music, photography, fashion, design and audiovisual arts.

Where does the name come from? 9 is the largest single digit number in the decimal system. Fertile and highly symbolic, it represents in many cultures, human and artistic creation, excellence, light and life. The “roof” refers to the idea of “height” and “leadership” as much as it does to the concept of “protection”, “haven” and “home”. The combination of these two notions sums up – in itself – the goals of the collective.

NEUVIÈME TOIT, in partnership with AKAA, presents an original project. Led by Goudet Abalé and Johanna Amelot (Art Advisor), the aim is to highlight African art in an innovative and accessible way through the use of non-fungible tokens (NFT) and hybrid media (physical/digital). 

For the 2022 edition, NEUVIÈME TOIT is proud to collaborate with the artist Willow Evann and 31 PROJECT , on an immersive artistic show that combines both the perception of the real world and its virtual mirror. 

Willow Evann is a visual artist, dancer and photographer. From Bondy, a suburb of Paris and originally from Ivory Coast, Willow Evann’s artistic practice focuses on his origins and his identity resulting from African and French colonial history. As a dancer, he naturally places the body at the core of his research and questions the construction of the image and social status of Black people in Western societies.

Lulled as a child by the reggae his father listened to, he has been immersed in Hip Hop culture since the age of 10. He started to focus on Locking (a dance born in 1970 on the West Coast of the United States) and is considered today as an essential reference of this movement. At the same time, he developed his career as a photographer and focused his practice on capturing gesture and choreographic movement.

In 2019, he joins the Kourtrajmé school where he experiments and develops his visual language and opens his practice to the digital dimension. In 2022, 31 Project exhibited his work in a duo show in its Parisian gallery.