On the cocoa road
Olivia paroldi is preparing to leave for Cameroon, the first step in a series of visits to cocoa farms across different continents, for an artistic project that is close to his heart, associating as always the humanism of the cause of children's rights and the poetry of the graphic language deployed in his prints.
The origins of the project
“This project was born from a beautiful encounter, enthuses the artist. The world of childhood is one of the common threads of my work and it is a subject that we have in common with my partner Julien Dechenaud, a Parisian chocolate maker. Indeed, chocolate conveys the taste of childhood, it is the emblem of a carefree gluttony ”.
For Julien Dechenaud, immersion in the farms of small cocoa producers is an opportunity to go back to the origin of the typical taste of the different vintages, to understand how specific notes develop depending on the climate, the terroir, of working and processing the beans, a unique character that he intends to restore as faithfully as possible in his creations, respecting the history associated with each culture. Olivia Paroldi will meet the families of the village organized around the farm, meetings which will inspire a series of prints.
"I would like to understand how children perceive the taste of cocoa, to know what their childhood taste is, to know how they represent gluttony, if the concept exists in terms comparable to ours, if the imagination of the the taste is the same or if it is different, ”explains Olivia Paroldi.
An artistic and humanitarian approach
These meetings and these exchanges, the artist will tell them in the graphic language which is his: the print. The drawings that she engraves are always a way of making the invisible visible, with gentleness and kindness, with attention to others, with the concern to reveal the beauty and grace of each in the delicate features of her engravings.
“I will be attentive to the condition of these children who live around the cocoa farms. My work on childhood poetry, already present in different series, is always part of a commitment, that of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. I hope that my collages can contribute in their own way to opening our eyes to the progress that remains to be made in this area. Chocolate can be a luxury product in our societies and the contrast with the production conditions of beans is such as to raise questions ”.
The first stage of a journey that will take Olivia and Julien to the four corners of the world - awaiting the opening of borders - a farm located in Cameroon, run by a woman, a production which constitutes the main activity of a village. The artist will meet the school children and take the time to get to know them, through artistic creation workshops. She will also establish a dialogue with orphan children in the region. Being able to draw together with the children will be a nice way to tackle the question of gluttony, and understand what form it takes for everyone, what the taste of chocolate refers to for everyone… Olivia Paroldi addresses these questions in the same way of an ethnologist, and her artistic achievements will bear witness to the encounters that may have nourished the knowledge of a singular universe. Films and photographs will also document the artistic creation project, and will allow us to share the moments of grace that will not fail to punctuate the creative path and the genesis of the various works.
Alongside Julien Dechenaud, Olivia Paroldi will seek to transcribe and represent, in her prints, flavor. All the flavor, beyond taste, history and knowledge of taste, the artist will deploy it in a graphic language woven from encounters, in the form of pop-up prints that open and develop with an effect of surprise, as during an original and initiatory tasting. A game between the open and the closed, the visible and the invisible, appearances and embodied realities.
A memorial story to tell
From the cocoa blossom to the bean, it's a whole memorial trajectory, nourished by the imprints of the earth, shaped by the topology and the character of the land, the whims of nature, the life of the elements, the life cycle, which will reveal the specificity of the taste notes. This memorial story, Olivia and Julien will transcribe it together, each in their own field of creation. The typicality of chocolate notes for the artisan of gluttony, the singularity of the history of the Other through its relationship to taste for the humanist artist.
After this first stage in Cameroon, other cocoa farms, other small producers, other lands, other continents, will be so many discoveries and precious encounters. Taste is a journey to meet the Other.
We can't wait to discover the works that Olivia Paroldi will bring back from these elsewhere. We are also eager to discover the bars that will concentrate all the power of unique flavors imprinted by these stories and witnesses of these encounters, bars that the artist will illustrate with his delicate features.
