AMBI Artist… and pétanque referee

La Provence, 18 August 2024. Interview by Carole Barletta.

A portrait of Ambi in her double life: a Malagasy visual artist working between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, and, for the past eighteen years, a qualified pétanque referee. The interview follows her from her childhood in Antananarivo, where she picked up the boules on the pitch for her father, the president of a local club. It then follows her arrival in France in 2000 and her fine arts studies in Aix. It closes with her work in burns and Antemoro plant-fibre paper, through which she addresses deforestation in Madagascar and the question of identity.

The second half of the piece turns to the incident of early July at the La Marseillaise tournament. Ambi, refereeing the competition for the twentieth time, was filmed and insulted there, subjected to racist remarks and death threats after awarding a decisive point. The other referees held a symbolic strike in solidarity. The Federation and the organisers filed a complaint, and the players involved were banned from the competition for life. Ambi speaks of refereeing as a way of keeping the peace on the pitch, of the workshops she runs with children, and of her wish one day to bring pétanque and her art together.

You can know someone by the way they play…

Summary and quotations from the original article, published in La Provence under the title « AMBI Artiste… et arbitre de pétanque ».