Poutine in a sandbox, the surprise signed Colomina in the Luxembourg Gardens
A Vladimir Putin gleaming in red resin in the middle of a children’s play area? It was the surprise of this Thursday morning, at the opening of the Luxembourg garden (Ve), and it is a new artistic and pacifist turpitude by James Colomina, the Toulouse native accustomed to the wild installations of his life-size sculptures, charged with symbols, which he sows in sometimes incongruous places in France.
In Paris, his characters, his child in a dunce’s cap or his statues of men of power, have for example stayed on bridge piles, empty pedestals of statues, on the pediment of emblematic buildings, or like President Macron, near the tent of a homeless man…
This time, James Colomina “placed” his Vladimir Putin in the early morning right in front of the Senate, “one of the symbols of power”, seated on a fake tank, then moved it to a sandbox, “to a dialogue with the children, which ended with a confrontation with a very determined baby,” explains the artist from Toulouse.
“This sculpture aims to denounce the absurdity of war and the courage of children in the face of violent and catastrophic situations that they have not demonstrated”, he explains. The remaining challenge was…how long the resin statue remained, before it was removed by Senate security. A place that James Colomina had already “invested” last year, with a statue symbolizing stolen childhood, in reference to the law on sexual non-consent at 13 years old.