As an exhibition on the work of artist C215 in Ukraine begins on February 1, hailed by the Ukrainian government, 20 minutes invites you to discover his work in a walk in Paris in five stages and about an hour’s walk (see the Google map at the end of the article). Five works selected by Christian Guémy – his real name – which will make you meet great men and great women, but also two children and a cat.
The portrait of Victor Hugo, rue Soufflot
“We have several lives, we don’t necessarily recognize ourselves in the person we have been,” announces Christian Guémy at the start of our interview. For this first stage of his career, the artist proposes to start on rue Soufflot, in front of a portrait of Victor Hugo made in 2018. In other words, after the great turning point in his artistic work, when he began to paint figures known. “Before, I represented anonymous people. What interested me was above all the question of emotion without mediation, the humanization of everyday life. And then from 2013 I considered that urban art was recognized enough to put explicit content. »
The portrait of Victor Hugo, as well as that of many “pantheonized”, fits into this framework, alongside the scientist Marie Curie, the writer Alexandre Dumas, or even the resistance fighter Pierre Brossolette. “There has been for about ten years in my works a certain idea of adherence to the Republic, to the Law, to civic engagement, to surpassing oneself, to altruism, to exemplarity”, completes Christian Guémy.
Simone Veil – without swastika – place d’Italie
“Simone Veil embodies the European construction without which our country would have collapsed, but also the right of women to dispose of their bodies or the question of anti-Semitism. This portrait is a tribute to the values that saved me, to the public school teachers who spotted me, took me to college, gave me landmarks. I’m just trying to give back what I was given. It is by attaching ourselves to authors that we build ourselves. Even today I’m learning and I invite people to get out of Twitch and manga to take an interest in all this. Starting with the former Minister of Health who fought to decriminalize abortion, among other highlights of her life. It was because she was Jewish that her portrait was tagged with swastikas in 2019, before being renovated by C215.
A blue and “soft” cat, rue Nationale
From Place d’Italie, take Boulevard Vincent Auriol and walk a good five minutes until you cross Rue Nationale on your right. Look up, he’s here! A large blue cat, facing the boulevard and the sky, with its little whiskers and erect ears, listening to the world. A work produced in 2013, at a time when the street artist was therefore beginning to turn to republican figures: “This is my first large wall, and it is one of the last light works. A cat is relaxed! I wanted to pose street art as something soft, to say that it is an art of order, it could also evoke life in the street and the cat of social networks”, comments C215, who often paints cats: “It’s like a signature. »
If you raise your head a little higher still, you will see a beautiful Marianne, blue white red like the French flag, with a tear in her face. It is that of the artist Shepard Fairey alias Obey Giant, who created it in response to the Bataclan and Paris attacks of November 13, 2015. A blue tear was then added to echo the red tears added in 2020 by a collective denouncing “the security policy of the government”. A Marianne who also resonates perfectly with the work on the Republic of C215.
A Golden Age that is not one, rue du Dr Magnan
Retrace your steps towards Place d’Italie, and once there, take Avenue de Choisy and walk for 5 to 10 minutes until you come across Rue du Dr Magnan on your left, and the Café L’Age Golden. Raise your head, and you will see a large fresco representing a child, yellow blue purple, the gaze partly shaded. A portrait quite in contrast with the name of the café, since here childhood is not portrayed as the ideal period. It is the photo of a child from a favela in Sao Paulo that inspired Christian Guémy here, at the birth of his son Gabin in 2019. And he waited to do this portrait here, in one of his places favorites in Paris, which he often visits with his friends.
“It speaks to all the tension and all the mystery that there can be in the suffering of a child. The idea was to respond to this name of bar, because we always evoke a happy childhood, but in fact we suffer at this age, sometimes even the little things. When you are a child, you inevitably live in constraint, humiliation, frustration, and sometimes even abuse. And the more we progress, the more we free ourselves. »
A Ukrainian girl, rue de Patay
Finally, take rue de Tolbiac to the east, and walk about ten minutes until you find rue de Patay on the left, which you will go up for 170m to find at number 131 a very recent work by C215, again representing a child. A yellow and blue little girl, in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, with the typical crown of flowers, and a worried look. The artist met the girl in 2013 but painted her in March 2022, at the start of the conflict, in a gesture of support with the Ukrainian people.
“It was at the foot of this fresco that I met the spokespersons of the Ukrainian Embassy and it was there that I made the decision to go to Ukraine at the start of the conflict, along the front Belarus, and also in kyiv which was besieged”, explains Christian Guémy. His work on site in March and April 2022 can be seen at the National Assembly as part of the Slava Ukraini exhibition.
Slava Ukraini, until February 25, 2023. Galerie des fêtes, National Assembly – 33 quai d’Orsay, 75007 Paris. Presence of the artist every Friday (February 3, 10, 17 and 24). Free admission. Mandatory reservation on the website of the National Assembly.