Photo credits: Pierre Douaire

It's hard not to know Margaux Brugvin when you're interested in art and artists. The critic has the art and the way to talk about it with passion and without snobbery while bluntly debunking preconceived ideas. An enthusiasm that she has no trouble passing on to her 90 subscribers on Instagram. Her direct language that speaks to everyone, her curiosity, her knowledge of art history, make her account a mine of information and good advice for navigating this world that is not easy to access and often intimidating for those who do not master its codes. As you will have understood, La French Touch is a fan of Margaux Brugvin.

annie ernaux

In 2016 I opened for the first time a free by Annie Ernaux and I realized that the daily lives of women were a novel - just like the quests of the heroes of Greek mythology that I adored as a child or the misfortunes of the Rougon-Macquarts that I devoured as a teenager. After Ernaux, I read Elena Ferrante, Goliarda Sapienza, Natalia Ginzburg, Monique Wittig, Virginia Woolf and many others, and it was first by reading these novels that my feminist commitment was born. It was by discovering the world through the experiences of these heroines, by feeling their pain and savoring their victories, that I became aware - at a deeply intimate level that no essay or documentary has ever touched - of the battles that we still have to fight. Since then, whenever a subject interests me, I explore it first through the novel.

Japanese Literature and Feminist Science Fiction

Still in this process of understanding the world through novels, last year I read about ten contemporary Japanese authors in order to understand this island on the other side of the world a little better. I particularly recommend Sayaka Murata. Finally, this summer, I dove into feminist science fiction to better imagine the future. I now want to read all of Ursula K. Le Guin's work.

The Paris of artists

My favorite Saturday activity is to walk the streets of Paris, from art gallery to art gallery, taking a coffee break with a glass of white wine on a terrace. I find it wonderful that there are dozens of small free exhibition spaces throughout the city, where you can spend ten minutes or an hour of your afternoon to discover the vision of an artist. You have to dare to cross the threshold of these mini art centers, get past the sometimes rather austere reception, and make these places your own. The hardest part, at first, is to identify the exhibitions that might interest you, but for that, there are sites like Paris Gallery Maps or Slash Art. Little by little, you will identify the gallery owners where you are sure to be amazed, according to your taste.

Autumn exhibitions

Among the exhibitions of the new school year there were, just opposite the Centre Pompidou, at the Poggi gallery, the delirious furniture of surrealist artists; a few meters away, in the Marian Goodman gallery, on the rue du Temple, the disturbing photographs of Joanna Piotrowska; on the other side of the Seine, at Mennour, on rue Saint-André-des-Arts, the fascinating optical illusions of Alicja Kwade (until November 5) and finally, right next door, on rue Jacob, in the small gallery of Eric Mouchet, one of my greatest discoveries of recent years, the Afghan artist Kubra Khademi.

The taste of Marseille

After literature and art, my third great passion is eating! I love family meals, with friends, with my lover or even alone with a good book. I love cooking, but I love even more the cuisine of those who have made their passion a devouring profession. This summer, I rediscovered Marseille through the new culinary scene that has set up there: Ivresse, Livingston, Ripaille or the café-bakery Pétrin Couchette.

Nathan Sebagh

In Paris, at the moment, I often go to my friend Nathan Sebagh's, who opened the restaurant l'Arpaon a few months ago, in the 18th arrondissement. Bistronomic cuisine with a few Tunisian accents. I have also discovered in recent months the delights of popular Japanese cuisine by chef Cho Miyashati, in his two Parisian restaurants in the 11th arrondissement, Haikara Deep Fried and Haikara Izakaya.