Sometimes, while thinking of the people who marked out my journey to Brasilia, I think of those encountered at some of existence’s crossroads by decision of fate, and whose intervention has helped, sometimes even accelerated the progress of things to come. Then my friend Juliette Vincent comes to my mind immediately.

I met Juliette in 2004, after my return from Rio de Janeiro where I had encountered Oscar Niemeyer, at a time when she collaborated with the Franco-Brazilian association Jangada (the vocation of which was -and still is to this day-, to promote Brazilian culture in France through the Brazilian Film Festival). A cheerful, benevolent and likeable young maiden, Juliette would introduce me very soon to Denise Leitão, Director of Culture at the Maison du Brésil. A few exhibitions in this prestigious place followed as of 2005, and each of them always made me realize the importance of my meeting with Juliette.
Subsequently, the latter helped me considerably in my dealings with Elaine Ruas, in the matter of my correspondence with my lady from Brasilia. Having spent her teenage years in Latin America, Juliette had an extensive knowledge of Portuguese (among other tongues), which she spoke and wrote fluently. I cannot thank her enough for intervening and amending all these emails written to Elaine in my wobbly Portuguese, something that she always did in a good mood and in needed time.

This is how and why it became so obvious to me to invite her to come with me to Brasilia in 2010, to help with my exhibition’s production there and to facilitate my linguistic exchanges with Elaine, between many other things. Which she did, with her atavistic generosity and good humour, warm like the Cerrado sun. We certainly had a few good laughs there, these fortunately lighting up the inevitable darker moments of stress and tension, not mentioning the brief moments of despair inherent to this type of production, during the heavy week of labour preceding the exhibition’s Opening Night.