How to Host a Lunch Like a Parisian Gallerist

A typical gathering — day or night — at Bianca Lee Vasquez’s home in Paris’s Second Arrondissement ends with dancing, usually to ’70s disco or to salsa by artists like Johnny Pacheco and Celia Cruz. Lee Vasquez, 40, who has Cuban-Ecuadorean heritage, trained in classical and contemporary dance in Miami and at the Alvin Ailey Theater in New York before moving to Paris 20 years ago. But she’s now best known for her multidisciplinary art practice, which ranges from textile installations like “Webmaking Ritual II” (2017), for which she wove strips of fabric around the trees in Paris’s Palais Royal garden, to meditative performances like “Dirt Series” (2021), in which she explored the power of microbes, working soil between her fingers to activate its healing properties. And while she often incorporates movement and gesture into her work, it’s in her living room, among friends, that she tends to really let loose.

For the past few years, that room has served as an occasional extension of Sainte Anne, the gallery Lee Vasquez founded with her friend Masha Novoselova, 39, a Russian-born model turned art director, in 2021. One of a new cohort of dynamic, independent Paris art spaces, the small contemporary gallery focuses on female artists who, like Lee Vasquez, are interested in our relationship with the natural world. “We want to give them a voice and a safe space,” she said recently. (The gallery’s current show, “Fruits of Labor,” is its first to exclusively feature work by men: the Guadeloupe-born French mixed-media artist Kenny Dunkan and the German sculptor Stefan Knauf.)

Lee Vasquez’s home — a calm, loft-like duplex in a 17th-century apartment building — is just blocks from Sainte Anne, so opening-night parties tend to end there, and she often hosts meals for the gallery’s artists and extended community. On a rainy Sunday in February, she held one such gathering, a lunch for her friends and collaborators, in an effort to liven up a particularly somber Paris winter (there had been just 38 hours of sunlight in the previous 29 days). In contrast to the gloom outside, the apartment — which Lee Vasquez shares with her two sons, Vasco, 12, and Esteban, 11, and a pair of parakeets, Peggy and Pegasus — was lush with potted plants and flooded with light thanks to its 16-foot-tall windows. Lunch itself was laid-back, with a loose start time and a buffet format, so that guests could come and go, and help themselves to food, as they pleased. “A sit-down meal rarely happens as I have a problem limiting my guest list,” said Lee Vasquez. But the semi-improvised approach suits her well: “I like people to talk to whoever they like, to be free, to move around.”

The attendees: The 20 guests included Dunkan, 36, and the curator Simon Gerard, 30, who worked on the current exhibition; Knauf, who’d been there for the show’s opening a week before, was back home in Berlin. There was a Latin American contingent consisting of the Uruguayan-born, Paris-based sculptor Katharina Kaminski, 30, who had an exhibition at Sainte Anne last month; the Cuban curator Dayneris Brito, 28; and the Peruvian architect Diego Delgado-Elias, 44. Other friends included the Serbian designer Ana Kraš, 39; the former Paris Opera dancer Emilie Fouilloux, 40; the Australian designer Kym Ellery, 40; and the Australian actress Melissa George, 47. The couple behind the up-and-coming Paris architecture studio Festen, Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay, both 37, who live in the neighborhood, also stopped by — as did the Italian fashion designer Giambattista Valli, 56, his partner Farid Rebbali, 45, and their son Adam, 11. “Bianca has an art for bringing people together; she connects people, and everyone is so different,” said Valli. “It doesn’t feel typical of Paris.”

The table: The meal was laid out on the dining table, on a mix of vintage silver and glass platters that Lee Vasquez has collected over the years. The porcelain tableware and water vessel, as well as a vase set on a nearby plinth, were made by the ceramist Elsa Brunet, whose pottery classes in Saint-Germain Lee Vasquez has taken for the past two years. The mismatched white linens and glasses were flea market finds.

The food: Lee Vasquez asked the 26-year-old Estonian chef Monika Varšavskaja, who specializes in Eastern European-inspired, vegetable-centric food, to prepare the meal. She served two puff pastry pies — one filled with cabbage and another stuffed with chopped boiled eggs and dill — alongside a stack of flatbreads and dishes of pickles, olives and anchovies. Platters of blanched brussels sprouts and a rainbow-colored radicchio salad added color to the table. “It’s typical market food from my childhood, made from humble ingredients — so perfect for a Sunday lunch,” said Varšavskaja. For dessert, the British-Spanish chef Isabel Garcia, 29, brought two tres leches spongecakes, which sparked a playful debate about the origins of the beloved Latin American dessert, serving them alongside a platter of passion fruit and pawpaw.

The drinks: Katkoot prosecco — a delicate, fragrant sparkling wine made in Treviso, Italy — flowed freely, followed later by Ecuadorean coffee from Lee Vasquez’s father’s farm in the country’s northern Cotacachi region.

The music: Brito, who Lee Vasquez says often gets the dancing started, put together a soulful, eclectic playlist that included the crowd favorite, “Thinking of You” by Sister Sledge, as well as “Yeah!” by the American Latin jazz musician Tito Puente and “Mali Cuba” by the Malian-Cuban supergroup AfroCubism.

The conversation: A mix of English, French and Spanish could be heard throughout the afternoon as small groups formed and dispersed in the living room. Lee Vasquez, Garcia and Fouilloux were hatching a plan for a food-inspired artist’s residency at Fouilloux’s family winery, Castello Di Cigognola, in Lombardy, Italy. And Kraš and Ellery discussed the new Paris design fair Matter and Shape, at which both were both planning to exhibit new object-led collections.

An entertaining idea: Lee Vasquez likes to tailor her dress codes to individual guests — just to keep things interesting. “I got a message that said, ‘Dress like spring,’ so I chose all these florals. But then I met a woman coming in, and she said the dress code is neutral,” Kraš said, with a laugh. “But you look so good in color! I wanted you to pop,” Lee Vasquez explained. “I don’t like it when everyone comes looking the same, so I told Diego to wear brown, and I wanted Katharina to wear beige and match the décor.” Ellery and George, both eight months pregnant, decided to opt out: “I’m just happy I made it here,” said George.