Passing near Les Halles this morning in Paris, passers-by must have had a strange surprise. A sculpture of Santa Claus, entirely red, seemed to be going through the trash, except that instead of looking for something interesting in the trash, this Santa Claus was holding trash bags in his hands… wrapped like gifts . This enigmatic work is that of the artist James Colomina, known for making street art with sculptures installed without authorization.
Santa Claus in question remained on site, not far from the Saint-Eustache church, from 7:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. “It’s to highlight the ecological consequences of the Christmas holidays,” the artist explains to us by telephone, who wanted to talk about “waste, pollution, overconsumption of gifts and packaging.”
It’s a contrast to people who have nothing
“I try to give useful gifts but I feel like we find ourselves in situations where we find ourselves obligated to give gifts. We find ourselves giving useless gifts, we buy lots of trees, we eat too much, it’s a whole… and it’s a contrast with the people who have nothing, like the homeless people who were next to the sculpture », comments James Colomina.
In 2019, the street artist tried to raise awareness about the condition of migrants who die in the Mediterranean by installing a work representing the body of a child lying under a shroud in Paris and Toulouse. In 2022, he installed a child soldier in a street in Toulouse, with a rose at the end of his machine gun, blocking the barrel.