She is one of the new heads of the government of Elisabeth Borne unveiled this Friday, May 20. Rima Abdul Malak was until now culture and communication adviser at the Elysée.
Rima Abdul Malak does not arrive in unknown territory at the Ministry of Culture where she succeeds Roselyne Bachelot. This 44-year-old Franco-Lebanese, renowned for her very direct style, has been working closely with Emmanuel Macron for three years. She has been particularly active since her arrival at the Élysée, to the point of being sometimes nicknamed “the second” Minister of Culture.
It was she who notably launched the Culture Pass, inspired by the one who preceded her in this position: Claudia Ferrazzi. She also who, in 2020, initiated the meeting by videoconference with artists to try to defuse anger in the midst of a pandemic.
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Rima Abdul Malak spent the first ten years of her life in Beirut in the midst of civil war, before arriving in Lyon with her parents, brother and sister. She began her career in the early 2000s in the humanitarian sector by taking over the management of the Clown sans frontières association. After a stint at the head of the current music division of the French Institute and then at the Paris City Hall where she became cultural adviser to the then mayor Bertrand Delanoë, she left for New York as cultural attaché for the French Embassy. Before joining the Élysée.
Upon her arrival rue de Valois, Rima Abdul Malak pledged this Friday to ” defend cultural sovereignty “, to invest in arts education and to raise ” the titanic challenge » of the ecological transition in the environment. The projects awaiting him at the Ministry of Culture are immense. Especially since the institution had been pinned last December by the Court of Auditors last December which had ordered it to reorganize and redefine its objectives.