The Job in the Shadows of the Art World
Céline Catucci is a French Design Brand Ambassador in the BELUX area. She talked to us about her place in the Art World, and about the jobs far from the scene that are making everything possible.
“I think that the Personal has a lot of impact on the Professional. What we live in our childhood, the people we meet along the way” starts Céline in talking about her professional journey.
She does what she does out of curiosity, and the love of constantly learning and meeting new, interesting people.
Céline Catucci is a French Design Brand Ambassador in the BELUX area. She talked to us about her journey towards the Art World, and her very specific place in it, in the shadows.
From art background to art conversations
Céline is from Lyon but came originally from an Italian family. “On my dad’s side, they were a family of artists. My grandfather was a sculptor. I think I inherited a little of this filiation”.
She talks about her grandmother with love and admiration. A platinum blond driving a sport’s car, she worked for the Maison Bianchini-Férier, one of the oldest silk houses, now closed. She handled the fabric collections, working with artists for the impressions. She would bring leftovers home, and Céline can still remember some of them, like the ones from Raoul Dufy, a French Fauvist painter.
“That time of my life really left an impression on me. My grandma had her own seamstress, was wearing tailor-made clothes. She was in this art world. And she was incredibly free. She never wanted to remarry once she got divorced, and I think I’ve got this need for independence and freedom from her”.
“I realized that the fences between art and design could be brought down if only people could be made to communicate”
Céline pursued her studies in Art History and Communications. Her first professional experience was for Lyon Parc Auto, a company in charge of all Lyon’s parking.
“They had an innovative approach. They made the architects, the artists and the engineers sit around the same table and create something together. It was a new vision back then” she remembers.
She worked on a book with one of the curators, gathering all the material for it, interviewing the artists.
“It was such an interesting project. In France, there’s this tendency of putting the artists on one side, and the craftsmen or the engineers on the other. This was different, everybody was talking and collaborating to produce something together. I realized that the fences between art and design could be brought down if only people could be made to communicate. I was the spectator of a wonderful new process”.
And that’s when she found her calling. Putting people in relation, making them work together. A painstaking work, always in the shadow, but full of discoveries and new encounters.
The shackles you have to break
From then on her career was launched. She moved to Paris to work in the public sector, at the now Institut National des Métiers de l’Art. But this wasn’t a good fit.
“When you are in a system, and you leave it, you are out. You are erased completely. And that, as a human being, is absolutely terrible”
“To be passionate and to arrive in the public sector, that was probably the biggest obstacle I had to overcome, my biggest challenge. It creates absolute frustrations” Céline points out, looking back.
To have this need for freedom and be forced to fit into boxes and constraints was awful.
“When you are in a system, and you leave it, you are out. You are erased completely. And that, as a human being, is absolutely terrible”.
She went from there to the Maison Chevalier, a tapestry and textile conservation company. She was in charge of the gallery. “I found myself in the workshops with some of the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, that was absolutely fascinating”.
And when, later on, they decided to launch a contemporary art collection, Céline was in her universe. “I loved this mix of working with contemporary artists on one side, and experts and craftsman on the other. That matched my whole life”.
So when the gallery closed in 2008, and she moved to Belgium with her future husband, they made the jump, and created their own business: Katunco.
Brand Ambassador, Coach and Free
“I started from the ground up, I had nothing, no real network. But I had this commercial and communication side of me. In this world, you don’t sell products like you would sell lemonade. You have to go into the history, you have to be passionate about the brands you represent, you have to love to meet people”.
Now they represent 5 beautiful french furniture brands in Belgium and Luxembourg. Family brands, that she‘s chosen because she loves what they do.
“For us, the heart is really the human side of things. We love people, meeting them, working with them” she smiles.
Her job consists of promoting, communicating, launching the different products of her brands, with events and campaigns. To be able to forever discover something and someone new brings her amazing joy and satisfaction.
“My biggest accomplishment is to have succeeded in doing what I love and do it independently and freely”
On top of that, Celine works with Wallonie Bruxelles Design Mode, a public agency supporting fashion and design companies and designers, and MAD Bruxelles, a platform for expertise in the fashion and design sectors. She’s coaching young designers, helping them to sell themselves and to enter the market.
Once again, it’s behind the scene work, but incredibly rewarding. “I’m able to meet so many incredibly talented people. To help them. Sometimes you have a big “coup de Coeur” for some project or artists, and you just really want them to succeed”.
For her, this job, this life, is her biggest accomplishment. “To be able to do what I do now, it’s amazing, it’s what I wanted to do for a long time. I’m at that age where I’ve found a balance. In my professional life and in my personnel life. My biggest accomplishment is to have succeeded in doing what I love, and do it independently and freely”.
