Au Revoir Joseph Gallieni

How can fiction act directly on reality? This question is the basis of Colombian artist Iván Argote’s latest film. In front of the Musée de l’Armée in Paris stands the monument to the commander Joseph Gallieni, known for having committed massacres in French colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, and for his theories collected in the book Les Politiques des Races, a guide on how to dominate local communities in settlements. The pedestal depicts four half-naked women of four different ethnic groups representing the continents he dominated. Thanks to an imposing crane and some extras wearing workers’ uniforms, Argote and his assistants staged all the preparations necessary for the removal of the statue. However, in the video, the removal was simulated by a 3D animation showing the statue being raised from its empty pedestal. With the collaboration of the historian Françoise Vergès and the journalist Pablo Pillaud-Vivien, the video of the fake removal was published on April 20, 2021 on the website of the magazine “Regards”, and went viral, opening a heated debate in the art world on the need to rethink the meaning of celebratory monuments.