Mazan trial: rethinking the “sleeping beauties” motif

While Mazan’s trial continues in Avignon, certain images that are common in literature and painting seem problematic today. What we commonly call “Sleeping Beauties”, these women, often scantily clad, languid and asleep, are watched without their knowledge or even subjected to male desire. So what to do with these fantasies that populate our common cultural imagination is the subject of today’s Culture Point.

News of the day

• Wanted by President Emmanuel Macron and academic Achille Mbembe since 2021, the Maison des Mondes Africains (MansA) should enable the influence of contemporary African culture in France. Although it already has employees, a budget and a director, no location has yet been allocated to it. The lack of money prevents the construction of a new building entirely dedicated to it, thus forcing “the House of African Worlds” to join another institution. The Ministry of Culture has just offered to house it in part of the premises of the Musée de la Monnaie de Paris. A possibility which has not aroused the support of either politicians or the Mint who are questioning the link between these two institutions.

• Architecture now, the Silver Square Prize was awarded yesterday, it was the firm Devaux & Devaux Architectes which won the prize this year for its rehabilitation of the upper station of the Salève cable car in Haute-Savoie. This building built in 1932 by the Swiss Maurice Braillard was restored by the two architects who wanted to make their architectural gesture as discreet as possible. Five other projects were rewarded, all having in common being rehabilitations or buildings constructed in harmony with their environment, a sign of a paradigm shift in the profession. Created in 1960, L’Equerre d’argent is the most prestigious award for architecture in France.

• Tomorrow in Paris the Un Week-end à l’Est festival: Created in 2016, Un Week-End à l’Est offers each year for a week a focus on a city in Central or Eastern Europe which is highlighted honor through cultural events. Armenia and its capital Yerevan were chosen for the 8th edition of this multidisciplinary festival. On the program are around thirty events around literature with, for example, a recital dedicated to the poems of resistance fighter Missak Manouchian, visual arts with an exhibition on the work of photographer Areg Balayan who has been documenting the war in Nagorno-Karabakh since 2009, but also music, cinema, theater and even architecture. It will be the choreographer Rima Pipoyan the godmother and the musician André Manoukian the godfather and you can find the complete program on the Culture Point page.