Investigation opened against a mural mixing hijab and yellow star

If it has been visible for several months in Grenoble, the work Bad religion? by the artist Goin has been creating controversy for a few days. This fresco showing a veiled woman carrying a yellow star has indeed been denounced recently by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif). Since Thursday, she has even been the subject of an investigation, ordered by the Grenoble prosecutor’s office, for “disputing the existence of crimes against humanity”.

This stenciled work, which therefore represents a woman wearing a hijab (Islamic veil) with blue stripes and a yellow star marked with the word “muslim” (Muslim), was painted last summer on a wall near the Museum of Resistance and Deportation from Isère.

No “exceeding the limits of freedom of expression”?

Before reporting the fresco to justice, the Crif had also arrested the EELV mayor of Grenoble, Eric Piolle, as well as the right-wing opposition group on the municipal council, led by Alain Carignon. The cultural assistant had replied to Crif that the City had not been informed of the realization of the fresco, whose “undoubtedly provocative” subject did not seem to her, however, “to exceed the limits of the freedom of ‘phrase’.

The executive of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, chaired by Laurent Wauquiez (LR), asked for the “immediate withdrawal” of the fresco, while suspending the subsidies granted by the community to a street-art festival . Last July on social networks, this festival reported the presence of Goin’s “sublime stencil” in a city street. Contacted on Thursday, the director of the Street Art Fest Grenoble Alpes however affirmed that the fresco had “no formal link” with the event he is directing.

“My work reflects the pain of Muslims and Jews”

“We have already invited this artist on various occasions but this was not the case last year, he came after the festival and he produced works where he wanted”, explains Jérôme Catz, who wonders on the timing of the controversy. “This fresco was visible for months, why is it coming out now? »

The artist, for his part, responded to criticism in the columns of Dauphine Libere “My work reflects the pain of Muslims and Jews who have been fighting for millennia. What is happening between them is distressing and should no longer happen in our time. “This work of art is a memorial to anyone who sees a threat in religion or in the origin of the other. Never again ! It is this evidence that I wanted to repeat! adds Goin. The fresco was covered in black paint last week.


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