In Marseille, artists transform the rat into a cool new logo

“In Marseille, the rats go out a bit like the Mediterranean: they put the chair outside and then there is a debate… They can be seen in Marseille. They don’t hide too much,” said Rhazi, manager of the Brick City store that launched a special collection, “Racoste“. “It is common to all the cities, we agree. And it is proportional to the number of residents, we also agree. But in Marseille, they are better,” he is sure.

In his store very close to Cours Julien, the artistic youth district of Marseille, the star t-shirt, white and green, adopts the codes of the famous crocodile brand. Multicolored caps, bucket hats and other hats also feature a small rat logo. In the store, a customer tries on different caps. Arnaud Devauchelle says that he has already “experienced rats in Marseille, which go between your legs or things like that”, but, for him, “it’s cool! “.

“Kakou from Marseille”

In his workshop, Rémy Lieveloo brushes a large gray rat with a long pink tail, surrounded by the name Marseille, on a t-shirt. This painter says that he had “this idea for all the tourists who come in the summer and have the image of Marseille that the city wants to give to tourists”. Except that, he says, “the truth is that the city is the same, it will not change. And rats are part of the decoration of Marseille. “

Funny hero wall frescoes, the rat comes in flip-flops or in the colors of the Olympique de Marseille. “Forever, Olympian,” proclaims a rodent, hat on his head and glasses on his nose, on the corner of the street next to “Cours Ju”. According to municipal estimates, Marseille has about 1.5 million rats, or 1.5 to 1.7 rats per inhabitant.

“Since we are from the center of the city, we have always known rats, we cannot say that there are more or less of them than before,” said the visual artist Alain Paris. In a series of sculptures entitled “Les Monstres”, he presents “Le Rat marseillais”, a unique piece in gypsum, painted with spray and created as “a tribute to our beautiful city “. “The rat is a bit of a mariole, a bit of a pimp. When a rat comes on the street, people are already joking about their race… The rat, for me, is the khakou…” he laughs.