Culture and Fashion

Rewind over the career of Cédric Malo, aka Tabas™, graphic designer, illustrator, and artistic director in Marseille.

Retour sur le parcours de Cédric Malo, alias Tabas™, graphiste, illustrateur, directeur artistique à Marseille.

By Sarah Carrière-Chardon - Photos Tabas / Samuel Guigues - November 24, 2011

It’s the mid-90s, in greater Paris then Annecy, with a high school diploma specialized in math and science, the hip-hop and skate fan Cédric Malo escaped to sunny Provence to continue his studies in Marseille. He took Stephan Muntaner’s classes at the time of the IAM covers, then worked for Tous des K, before going freelance in 2000 with the code name TABAS™. A name implying a complicity with the forbidden but also a rap on Marseille slang “Ca tabasse” which means "it rocks", it’s on fire... but burning slowly, like a cigarette.

With this namesake and surname that lends graffiti edge to his graphics, Cédric Malo also conceives interventions in public spaces, transforming traffic cones into giant cigarettes. Instead of moving forward with the digital age and the Internet, Malo prefers to work by hand, with Marseille as his giant playground. For the temporary exhibition space I Park Art in front of luxury jeweler Pellegrin, he showers the shop with glitter.Flirting from the beginning with graffiti, he maintains a street art edge. Playing with words, he takes them literally, or reappropriates them to better turn them around, shake them up. Known for his illustrated

typefaces and his fanciful characters, he’s also interested in manual 3D, the graphic object. As for clients, the festival Marsatac noticed him back in 2004 and since then he has orchestrated their artistic direction, as well as that of the Antibes’ Nuits Carrées festival and the Rencontres Parallèles… Marseille in the Box, Western Union, Moulinex and the "T Cosmetic Line" feature amongst his graphic production. With such a stage name, liquor companies and the media are his friends: Label 5 whisky takes him to visit the London Bridge, Pastis 51 throws him in the pool, Le Monde newspaper question him on the issue of decriminalization.

Far from a lone crusader, he pursues collaborations, in particular with the artist Gregory Decock, the photographer Samuel Guigues and the collective 5M. For over 12 years in Marseille, his graphic spirals without the smoke screen strive to create a stronghold for this prickly city.

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Photographie Samuel Guigues

Photographie Samuel Guigues