Petit Palais
Paris (FR)
2018

Peau blanche [“White skin”] takes its roots in the French occupation of Vietnam. Dedicated to the city of Paris, the Monument à la gloire de l’expansion coloniale française [“monument to the glory of French colonial expansion”] stood in front of the Palais des Colonies following the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931. The artist took plaster casts of elements of the sculpture, selecting highly charged symbols such as the feet and hands of the colonised, referencing the manual labour needed in colonial times for the benefits of the empire, or the Marianne, symbol of the glorious French Republic. Thus, the sculpture reveals History with force and density: substance as evidence, a physical reality as a reminder of the past occupation.