We're all "Charlie" after all
As mentioned above I lived in Paris for 1 year where I did a foundation year at "Prep'art"
and Charlie Hebdo's attack happened 2km away from us when we're still in school having a totally normal day, but soon enough we found at about the terrorist attacks through our cellphones even though it was happening as we were talking, we then all got locked up inside the school and no one was talking anymore, it was a morbid silent that was only broke by all the police's and ambulance's alarms... After that, for 2 months, the military forces and the police forces were everywhere, everyday, watching us. As you may imagine it was a quite traumatic event for all of us, both as French citizen and as future Artists and conveyors of meaningful messages, so a fb group was spontaneously created by all the Parisian (most of them at least) art students that was called "La relève" : the idea was to create a really small A3 poster and then walk on the Republic Square and glue them all on the floor, which we actually did at the end, and it was one of the best moment in my life, I really felt like we were doing something good, and making sure the next generation won't stay quiet
My creation was manual but I have pictures of it, I wrote a poem to go with it which I could translate hear but I think it would lose its true nature, so I will leave it to you to try and understand, the first layer is the poem written on a transparent sheet of paper, the 2nd layer (background) is a simple Pen drawing, in between the 2 layers I used some Pencil's 'ink' to give it a rougher aspect, I then framed the whole thing with a simple black tape
Paris’hope
Even though I moved to the Netherlands recently, I didn't forget about my country, my roots, my culture and the French "Art de vivre" that was attacked on this dark 13th November, I couldn't be there to pay a tribute to the victims or be there with my family and friends so I did this poster as my personal Tribute
The assignment we got for Drawing class was really broad : we had to make a poster with a statement, not using words, only visuals or symbols
That's what I did, using drawings of Paris' roofs that was the best way for me to represent this amazing city I was lucky to live in for 1 year (before moving to the Netherlands), since I could see all those amazing roofs from my small studio's window anytime of the day, as a message, I used the now famous Rue89 creation : the Eiffel/Peace symbol but did it again not to use someone's else creation,
This poster was really important for me at the time as I felt like I was a part and appart of/from this tragic event and its aftermaths
Luckily none of my friends or family was killed but so many people were, and it could have been them or even me, they attacked the heart of our capital, and tried to destroy our culture but we stood and we fought back with all our hearts for once all united (almost...)
This poster was inspired by the Chile Pavilion of Venice Bienale 2016 Edition I was lucky to visit with my fellow class mates
The exhibition's name was : Poéticas de la disidencia (Disident Poets ), the artworks were offering a really romantic, poetic vision of the Chile's resistance
The artists used Art as a barricade against the dictatorship and its radical ideology
The main artist is Paz Errázuriz with her photo series titled : La Manzana de Adán
The group of both artists and thinkers as female representants in this international venue is a big step towards equality. Those artists fought for their freedom and freedom of speech during the dictatorship era, never giving up on their dreams. Full of ambition and motivation they succeeded in getting people to share art and be united again, they also created a movement called CADA which is a cultural structure, and they said it all :
"La memoria es un arma de doble sentido Si por un lado es una herramienta potente y necesaria para incidir activamente en el presente, por otra parte puede transformarse en una prisión de la cual es difícil escapar"
