Nelson Mandela: from Prisoner to President

There are only three days left (including today) to see the extraordinary exposition honoring Nelson Mandela at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris. When I wrote about it on July 4th, I reported that the exhibit ended on July 6th. I went there on the 6th and learned that it had been prolonged until July 27th. I was relieved because I did not allot nearly enough time for my visit - particularly to view the many videos that are displayed (in English with subtitles) - and saw that I needed to return.

To whet the appetites of those in Paris who still have the opportunity to see the exposition in person, I'm presenting several photos of what awaits you at Paris' City Hall. For those who are not in Paris, I hope that you'll appreciate this virtual visit!

Reproduction of Mandela's Robben Island cell
© Discover Paris!

Opening Panel
© Discover Paris!

Bead portraits of Mandela
© Discover Paris!

Model of sculpture by Marco Cianfanelli
© Discover Paris!

Side view of elements composing model of sculpture by Marco Cianfanelli
© Discover Paris!

Panel featuring Mandela and Johnny Clegg - the White Zulu (detail)
© Discover Paris!

Sketches by Reshada Crouse
© Discover Paris!

Posters of Mandela as prisoner
© Discover Paris!

Mandela and de Klerk - Nobel Prize recipients (detail)
© Discover Paris!

Mandela as statesman (detail)
© Discover Paris!
Nelson Mandela: de prisonnier à Président (from Prisoner to President)
Hôtel de Ville de Paris
75004 Paris
Free entry via the courtyard in front of the Hôtel de Ville
Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 7 PM (last access at 6:30 PM)

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Art and Food Pairing™: Galerie Cinq Diamants and Botequim

For two years now, I’ve walked past Galerie Cinq Diamants and burned with curiosity about why this little shop, filled with African art and artifacts, sprang up just two blocks from my apartment in an out of the way neighborhood in the 5th arrondissement where no other art galleries exist. Last week, I had the opportunity to find out.

Galerie Cinq Diamants
© Discover Paris!
Zoran Smolovic, a citizen of the former Yugoslavia (the area now known as Montenegro) and long time Paris resident, owns and operates the gallery. When I met him several months ago, soon after he opened, we only had time to exchange a few words. Last week, our schedules finally coincided such that his shop was open when I had time to stop in. I got to sit down and Zoran got to tell me his story.

Zoran Smolovic
© Discover Paris!
Zoran is a journalist, a lawyer, and a photographer. Two days after moving to Paris over 30 years ago, he came across a collection of African art at an antique fair in the 17th arrondissement and fell in love with it. He began collecting at that moment and has never stopped. When his apartment became so full of art that his wife began to complain, he decided to move his treasures into a commercial area and opened the gallery in an office space formerly used by his wife.

Much of what Zoran displays is masks. His business card (which is actually a glossy color photograph) features an Igbo mask from Nigeria that hangs in a corner of the gallery. Other masks and sculptures are made by the Punu and Fang tribes of Gabon, the Baoulé of Côte d’Ivoire, and the Dogon and other tribes of Mali. Zoran obtains his works from African art dealers who transport pieces directly from Africa. He favors works made traditionally – those that are hand carved – but he does carry a few “mass-produced” items as well. He does not deal in antiques, but he only selects works that he feels are “magic.”

Igbo Mask
© Discover Paris!

Galerie Cinq Diamants business card
© Discover Paris!
For 24 years, Zoran worked for Radio France Internationale in Paris and covered the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and France. He left their employ only two years ago and now spends most of his time at the gallery.

Galerie Cinq Diamants is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 noon to 3 PM and from 4 PM to 7 PM. Depending upon circumstances, it may be open as late as 11 PM. If you want to call (see telephone number below), note that Zoran speaks Serbo-Croatian and French, but no English.

Literally a stone’s throw away from Galerie Cinq Diamants is my favorite Brazilian restaurant in Paris – Botequim Brasiliero.

Botequim Brasiliero
© Discover Paris!

Botequim Dining Room
© Discover Paris!
Everything I’ve ever eaten here has been excellent. After experimenting with different items on the menu in the past, I’ve come to anticipate selecting my favorites on the menu – panaché Botequim as an entrée and Feijoada as the main course - each time I come.

Panaché Botequim consists of fritters containing shredded chicken and spices (Coxinha), cheese (Risole de queijo), and minced beef (Kibe). The crust for each variety of fritter is always crisp and delicious – never soggy or oily. And the fillings provide a marvelous burst of flavor in every bite.

Panaché Botequim
© Discover Paris!
Feijoada is Brazil’s national dish. It is a stew of sorts, made from black beans and pork – pork belly, pork rib, and sausage. The meat in Botequim’s feijoada is remarkably lean, even though pork belly and sausage are naturally endowed with fat. The absence of liquid pork fat (or grease, as we call it in the southern U.S.) on the surface of the beans and sauce is the perfect testament to this.

Part of what makes this dish so appealing is the way it is served. Botequim always presents its feijoada in a gleaming copper pot with a ladle. The accompaniments – steamed rice, fresh orange slices with thin ribbons of young green cabbage, and manioc flour – are always served in terra cotta ramekins. If they are not already on the table, the server presents you with the obligatory containers of hot sauce. Then you can get down to the business of dining!

Feijoada
© Discover Paris!

Oranges and greens
© Discover Paris!
As for beverages, I always order Caipirinha, Brazil’s national cocktail. Made from cachaça (fermented and distilled sugarcane juice) and lime, it is a potent and tasty beverage. I believe that Botequim makes the best ones in town, and enjoy them both as a cocktail and along with my meal.

After feasting on all this, I forgo dessert. The selection consists of industrially-made frozen desserts and home-made puddings and creams, none of which is sufficiently tempting for me to voluntarily overeat. I always leave feeling that I’ve “done the right thing” because the entrée and main dish are totally satisfying!

Galerie Cinq Diamants
72, rue Claude Bernard
75005 Paris
Telephone : 06.87.67.81.19
E-mail: zorans@hotmail.fr
Metro: Censier Daubenton (Line 7)
Hours: Tue - Sat: 12 noon - 3:00 PM, 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM

Botequim
1, rue Berthollet
75005 Paris
Telephone: 01.43.37.98.46
Metro: Censier Daubenton (Line 7)
Hours: Mon - Sat: 12:00 PM - 2:30 PM, 8:00 PM - 11:30 PM
Sun: 8:00 PM - 11:30 PM

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Lola Oduwole Brings Sally Hemings to Life

Many know – at least superficially – the story of Sally Hemings and her intimate relationship with Thomas Jefferson, which reportedly began in Paris during Jefferson's tenure as Minister to France. Fewer know that a musical composition based on a fictitious Sally Hemings "diary" was commissioned by African-American opera singer Florence Quivar, written by African-American playwright Sandra Seaton, and set to music by Anglo-American composer William Bolcom. The song cycle* "From the Diary of Sally Hemings" was first performed by Quivar at the Library of Congress in March 2001.

Image from Sandra Seaton Web site

Twelve years later, British opera singer Lola Oduwole and I sat in a Paris café to discuss Oduwole's plans to revive this musical performance in Europe.

Lola Oduwole
Image courtesy of the singer

Of Nigerian descent, Lola was born in London and raised in the south of England until the age of 11, when she returned to London. She spent the rest of her childhood and young adulthood there. She is a classically-trained opera singer, having spent six years studying at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (4 years in the traditional program and 2 years in the graduate program). She currently lives in Belgium and comes to Paris once a month for voice lessons with a special trainer to further develop her instrument and her technique.

Lola learned about "From the Diary of Sally Hemings" years ago. She found the history of both the composition and the protagonist of the piece intriguing, and is currently researching and rehearsing the role. She has been approached by the Handelsbeurs Concert Hall in Ghent, Belgium to produce the show and sing the role of Sally Hemings. The director of the Flemish Opera company (Vlaamse Opera, with performance venues in Ghent and Antwerp), has also expressed interest.

The task of interpreting Sally Hemings operatically has caused Lola to view Paris in a new light. Hemings and Jefferson spent roughly two years together here (1787-1789) and Lola says that much of the song cycle is based on Hemings' experiences in France. Now, when she comes to Paris, she is "in search of" Sally Hemings. She seeks to walk where Hemings walked and drink in the atmosphere of the French capital with the intent to infuse her performance with it. She would like to produce "From the Diary of Sally Hemings" for Parisian audiences before the show debuts in Belgium.

Lola also sees Paris as a potential place to live. She loves the energy and ambiance of the city and the diversity of its people, and believes that Paris will provide more opportunities to work in her chosen field compared to the idyllic yet provencial town of Ghent, where she currently lives. She is interested in exploring professional activities outside the realm of classical opera and sees more possibilities here. She also says that moving here would provide her with a strong impetus to improve her French!

*A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity.

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Last Days for Two Black Paris Expos

Two special expositions are currently running in Paris and their last days are fast approaching. Those of you who are in town until July 15th are in luck - you can still see them. But you've got to act quickly!!!

Nelson Mandela: De prisonnier à Président (From Prisoner to President)
Exposition ends July 6, 2013

Image from the Hôtel de Ville Web site
Created by the Apartheid Museum of South Africa in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the exposition examines Mandela's life through six distinct lenses:

- the man
- the comrade
- the leader
- the prisoner
- the negotiator
- the statesman

It highlights the essential role that he played in the struggle against apartheid and demonstrates how he rebuilt the nation of South Africa from the ruins of conflict by exploiting the "arms" at his disposal: militantism, love, persuasion, forgiveness, acute political sensitivity, and self deprecation. Among the exhibits are a reproduction of the sculpture by Marco Cianfanelli (which inspired the image [see above] that the Hôtel de Ville is using to promote the exposition), numerous portraits, short films, and political banners.

Hôtel de Ville de Paris
75004 Paris
Free entry via the courtyard in front of the Hôtel de Ville
Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 7 PM (last access at 6:30 PM)


Alexis Peskine: Rising Above France
Exposition ends July 15, 2013

Image from the Be-ESPACE Gallery Web site
Franco-Russian-Afro-Brazilian artist Alexis Peskine creates incredibly powerful works of art with painted backgrounds and accents made from nails. His oeuvre is freshly, starkly, socio-political and yet is sometimes infused with wry humor. The following is a description of his technique as published by Galerie BE-Espace:

The nail takes the place of the brushstroke. A very particular artistic material, it is also a pointed metaphor: raw and uncompromising. In his portrait gallery, Peskine does not want to see just a single face: he uses nine sizes of nail that he drives in at different depths to create a sense of relief and introduce a third dimension. His works are based on graphics that use photography and Photoshop to achieve stencil-like effects. He hammers in nails, mounts them on wooden backings, and paints or varnishes them; sometimes he gilds them with gold leaf. The result is a combination of simple materials and technology, of ancestral themes and modernity, of art and craft.

Originally scheduled to close on June 21st, this show has been extended for three weeks and three days.

BE-ESPACE Gallery
57, rue Amelot
75011 Paris
Free entry
Monday to Saturday: 2:30 PM to 7:00 PM
Sunday: by appointment

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