The moment is always eagerly awaited by Nantes residents and contemporary art lovers in the public space. Le Voyage à Nantes unveiled this Tuesday the programming of its summer event 2023. And, unlike previous years, this one will have a common theme: statues. After a 2022 edition deemed disappointing by the public and which they themselves consider “soft”, the organizers want to find a “very visual” and “popular” event. “The statues tell the story of a city and, at the same time, everyone comes across them. We pass by and we wonder when they will move? That’s what we’re going to try to do. I think it’s going to be a lively edition with a lot of intrigue, a lot of movement”, explains Jean Blaise, boss of the Trip to Nantes.
The statues, often colossal, will indeed be everywhere in the city from July 1 to September 3. Starting with the essential places of passage in the city center: colored ceramic sculptures evoking the seabed in the fountain of the Place Royale, six strange creatures evoking “the failings of the human being” Place du Commerce, the representation of a “emaciated monster” in the Passage Pommeraye, the piling up of “figurative motifs” in a column 5 m high in the Place Sainte-Croix, but also the monumental gathering of 19 copies of famous statues from the Western world in the Rue d’Orléans. This last work, signed by the Chinese artist Xu Zhen, will certainly be one of the strong proposals of this year.
It will perhaps be the same for the diversion of four “well-known Nantes statues” that the public will be able to find in unexpected postures and decorations, like General Cambronne who will be reproduced in scale 1 seated on a terrace. from Place Graslin.
In unusual places
Statues can also be found in unusual places, such as the courthouse, in the courtyard of the former school of fine arts, in the garden of La Psalette, or even in an interior courtyard of the Place de la Bourse. . “We wanted to surprise and also make the people of Nantes travel”, justifies Jean Blaise.
The route, accessible free of charge by following the famous green line painted on the ground, will also show a “filmed parade” on the stage of the Graslin theatre, a collection of 300 theater masks in a cloister kept secret, or a tram line 2 transformed in bright colors of tropical plants.