The Drawing Now exhibition, a novel about autism, a trip to Sri Lanka… Madame Figaro Culture Week

Drawing with capital letters

Drawing Now is thinking big for its 17th edition. This is the point of this Contemporary Art Fair, which receives about 20,000 visitors every year. Thinking big means breaking out of compartmentalization. “We’ve often described shows like ours as niche. On the contrary, I believe that drawing is a basic practice, like painting and sculpture, explains Carine Tissot, director of the Drawing Society. This practice was phased out in the 1980s. Back then we favored the presentation, the concept… Today a whole generation of artists, in the biggest schools, are trained in drawing and screen printing. Another strong signal. Artists shortlisted for the Marcel-Duchamp Award have already become winners of the Drawing Now Award.” For the third year running, the bridge between the Salon du Dessin du Palais Brongniart and the Drawing Now Art Fair is being built, offering visitors a combined ticket that will help make Paris the capital of drawing. Thinking big also means freeing yourself from space, opening up to large formats, offering a panorama of painting that ranges from watercolor to charcoal through collage. Seventy-three galleries from fifteen countries were selected by a committee that nominated five female artists for the 13th Drawing Now Awards; The winner will be chosen on March 20. L.K.
Drawing Now Art Fairfrom March 21 to 24 in Carro du Temple, Paris. drawingnoartfair.com

Words to say

Where does this special and bright atmosphere come from? No doubt due to the fact that this book is a letter from Minh Tran Hui (a loyal collaborator Madame Figaro) to his 2½-year-old son (who will read later), with all the sincerity and emotion it implies. Little Serge has a 10-year-old older brother, Paul, who suffers from severe autism. he has no or very little communication with others, he will never speak, he cannot be left unattended, he is often moved by great agitation. . So, Serge and Paul’s mother tries to tell about the constant battle she has with her husband, which has brought them to the brink. But they endured, and the second child came, to whom he wants to tell his incomparable joy, to whom he also tells that he is not there to replace, to repair, to compensate… The author looks back at the exile; from his Vietnamese parents, whose families suffered during the war, and who became respected scientists in France. How long it took Paul’s disability to finally question the parental prescription of academic success that imprisoned him throughout his childhood, and to understand how French virtue ultimately produces too many decision-makers detached from reality, devoid of empathy and the common good. : . And, unfortunately, we have to repeat how far France is lagging behind in the treatment of autism and the unacceptable abandonment it leaves families with. Fatigue and despair, but also the magic of childhood, all told in lively and poetic writing that sublimate the hellish mundane to bring out its beauty. Parent or not, absolutely read this great letter. IP:

your brotherauthor: Minh Tran Huy, Éditions NiL, 176 p., €17.

A mental adventure

“You wake up with the answer to the question everyone asks.” It is with this intriguing sentence that the third novel by Shehan Karunathilaka, winner of the prestigious Booker Prize in 2022, begins. We follow Maali Almeida’s travails for a week, even though she has just died, and we discover: therefore, there really is life after life… It’s 1990, Sri Lanka is in flames and blood, and our hero, a war photographer by profession, has a week to track down his killers and house his roommates; lover DD and her best friend Jacqui on the trail of a box of clichés she hopes can end the conflict. On the side inhabited by ghosts and ghosts, ghosts and demons, where we read your story, examining your ears, where some command you to “reach the Light”, while others try to distract you, promising you the power to “whisper to the living”, he begins a twisty investigation that depicts with biting poignancy and desperate irony the personal, ethnic and political conflicts of which Sri Lanka is woven. Who are the monsters, who are the victims, where does evil come from, and is good even possible? Between a thriller, a fantasy novel, and a fairy tale fueled by some really clever folklore, The Seven Satellites of Maali Almeida By turns funny, dramatic, and philosophical, it carries us with a sense of rhythm and an incredible power to propel us between the horrors and beauties of the living and the dead, justice and vengeance, the nation and the divided man. MTH:
The Seven Satellites of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunathilaka, Éditions Calmann-Lévy, 450 p., €23.90. Translated by Javier Gross.