La liberté guidant le peuple
45.7567° N, 8.6060° E
2022
"Liberty Leading the People"
Spray can
02/10/2022
H. 305cm x W. 335cm
Former Taino Powder factory, Campaccio Street 21020 (Va) Italy
There are fateful dates that bring about curious coincidences in history. While July 27, 1830 marked the beginning of the "Trois Glorieuses" insurrection in Paris, which cost the lives of more than 500 people, a hundred years later, on July 27, 1935, it was a another type of explosion which would cause the death of 35 workers, mainly women, in the Taino powder factory in Italy.
The symbolic force of Liberty by Delacroix commemorating the first event is so strong that Andrea Ravo Mattoni chose it to celebrate the second. It thus pays homage to the women victims of this accident and more broadly of a capitalist society which exploited their labor force in precarious security conditions. Thus the silhouette of Marianne armed with her gun, an unexpected reference to factory production, emerges from the wall like the allegorical ghost of her workers.
Elegiac, the work drawn with a spray paint in red chalk tones as if it were a sketch, takes on the ethereal allure of souls and subtly revives the memory of the deceased.
Cyrille Gouyette
"Liberty Leading the People"
Spray can
02/10/2022
H. 305cm x W. 335cm
Former Taino Powder factory, Campaccio Street 21020 (Va) Italy
There are fateful dates that bring about curious coincidences in history. While July 27, 1830 marked the beginning of the "Trois Glorieuses" insurrection in Paris, which cost the lives of more than 500 people, a hundred years later, on July 27, 1935, it was a another type of explosion which would cause the death of 35 workers, mainly women, in the Taino powder factory in Italy.
The symbolic force of Liberty by Delacroix commemorating the first event is so strong that Andrea Ravo Mattoni chose it to celebrate the second. It thus pays homage to the women victims of this accident and more broadly of a capitalist society which exploited their labor force in precarious security conditions. Thus the silhouette of Marianne armed with her gun, an unexpected reference to factory production, emerges from the wall like the allegorical ghost of her workers.
Elegiac, the work drawn with a spray paint in red chalk tones as if it were a sketch, takes on the ethereal allure of souls and subtly revives the memory of the deceased.
Cyrille Gouyette
