Par Guillaume Laurens
Published on 4 Aug 22 at 18:44
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James Colomina struck again! The street artist of Toulouse installed, on Tuesday August 2, 2022, the statue of Vladimir Poutine riding a tank in New York, USA. The president of the Russian Federation, resin version, had already made an appearance in Barcelona and Paris.
“In the sandbox, with the little ones”
“The work lends itself to being moved”, slips the artist to Toulouse news. After stopping off at the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, then at Parc Joan Miró in Barcelona, this Vladimir Poutine dressed all in red “has just been installed in Central Park, in the sandbox, with the little ones”.
“Vladimir is on his tank, the war continues… The environment has changed, but the message remains the same”.
“The absurdity of war and the courage of children”
In this playground from Central Park where James Colomina installed his latest work, it does not go unnoticed. The place was obviously not chosen at random:
“This sculpture aims to denounce the absurdity of war and the courage of children in the face of violent and catastrophic situations that they did not trigger”.
–“Putin took kicks, slaps…”
According to the street artist from Toulouse, the Russian president – whom his American counterpart Joe Biden called “dictator” after his attack in Ukraine – is strained in the USA. If many children are content to attack him water gun, others are more direct:
“Putin took kicks, slaps, punches, sand in the head, water, the barrel is half broken… New York is hot!”
James Colomina and his red men, a very large family
James Colomina is not at his first stroke of brilliance in the streets of New York since in April 2018, another statue, called “The Little Watcher” had already appeared there. The family of little red men made in Toulouse never stops growing…
After the man with the apple head on the Ramblas of the Pink City, the man with the teddy bear near Barcelona, the traveler, the passenger, the child in a dunce’s cap, the child of ‘AZF, or even the child with a diving mask, the former dental technician turned street artist had installed in April 2022 the statue of a child with a masked face, holding a rifle between his arms, with a rose which closes the end of the barrel, above the American Cosmograph cinema in Toulouse. It was already a poetic tribute to “first victims” of the war in Ukraine: children. With its flower that blocks the barrel, “to give more importance to the rose than to the gun”, the child with the rose was intended to “defend the peace”. And thus bear witness to “the fragility of life”.
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