Protest Art
Demonstrators are upending the country’s public landmarks to denounce police violence, under-resourced schools, and a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
When students in France took to the streets in 1968 to protest the country’s crumbling education system and Gaullist government, they transformed public statues into participants in their cause. After the May 2 shuttering of Paris Nanterre University, where anti-imperialist students began protests in late March that year, demonstrators took to the Sorbonne, where they hung portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Chairman Mao Zedong from the 17th-century facade’s pillars and lodged red revolutionary flags into the statues of scientist Louis Pasteur and writer Victor Hugo. During a May 13 demonstration coinciding with a national general strike, other protesters climbed atop Léopold Morice’s “Monument à la République” (1883), which depicts Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, and staked out the artwork as a gathering ground for fellow protesters.
Today, student demonstrators in France are addressing many of the same issues at the heart of May 68, from underresourced schools to a worsening cost-of-living crisis — and are similarly incorporating public statues, monuments, and culturally significant sites into their actions. Earlier this month, protesters draped the “Monument à la République” in a white garment reading, “Neglected high schools, youth sacrificed,” denouncing poor labor conditions, staff shortages, and grueling hours in the education system.
On October 19, dozens of students from the École du Louvre, a higher education arts institution in the Louvre Palace in Paris, blocked the main entrance of the Louvre Museum. And in Marseille, a separate group knocked a bust of Marianne to the floor after breaking into Marseille City Hall.
Elsewhere, protesters have dressed statues in garments referencing other social movements, making broader, historical appeals to France’s long protest tradition. On October 17, organizers gave Marianne a wardrobe change, opting for a yellow vest bearing the message, “2026: The police mutilates high schoolers.” A reference to the self-described gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”) who took to the streets in 2018–20 in protest of rising fuel prices and the unaddressed plights of ordinary citizens, the display underscored the longstanding and growing fissures between the public and police, who have overwhelmingly arrested minors and injured hundreds of students since protests began. French rights groups and lawyers have accused police of inflicting “war-like injuries” on teenagers: Riot officers maimed a 14-year-old boy with a tear gas grenade in a Parisian suburb and beat others with batons, among other violent methods.
Demonstrators at the Place de la République streaked the eyes of the allegorical maidens Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (personifications of the French Revolution slogan and national motto of France) with black tears, suggesting the country’s detachment from the progressive principles and actions fought for in the late 18th-century revolution, when civilians toppled statues of the old monarchic order or replaced them with democratic symbols.
The subversion of historical monuments has long been at the heart of social and political mobilizations worldwide. During Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in the United States and beyond, activists brought down or symbolically defaced commemorative statues of colonial and racist figures, including Christopher Columbus and King Leopold II. In Richmond, Virginia, a notorious monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee was reclaimed by protesters who transformed the statue through graffiti, performance, and projections. At the height of the BLM movement, in 2020, protesters in France draped a black cloth over a statue of French military commander and colonial administrator General Joseph Gallieni.
France’s student activists have also positioned their struggle as interconnected with others. Protesters stuck a Palestinian flag atop and wrapped a yellow vest around a statue of Joan of Arc in Toulouse. Authorities promptly removed the vest and flag, sparking fierce online debate about how statues can and should be used in political protests. While some perceived the demonstration as an attack on France’s national identity, others recognized the Palestinian flag as a universal bridge between distinct but related human rights struggles.
During the May 68 protests, student activists also incorporated the visual language and rallying cries of the anti-Vietnam War movement. On May 13, 1968, photojournalist Jean-Pierre Rey photographed a young French woman, Caroline de Bendern, holding the Viet Cong flag during protests in the Latin Quarter. The image, which recalls the figure of Marianne at the center of Eugène Delacroix’s painting “Liberty Leading the People” (1830) earned de Bendern the nickname “Marianne of ’68,” updating the French Revolution to the context of the time.
Beyond the current movement’s tactical use of public statues and monuments, explicit May 68 references have appeared on banners and protest art in recent demonstrations. Some protesters have conjured playfully riffed on Gen-Z slogans, such as “Generation 67 brings you May 68.” Others use that history to spell out warnings to French authorities: “If you screw us over (or pull a fast one on us), we will give you a May 68.”
