A fresco by Hervé Di Rosa in France’s National Assembly commemorating the abolition of slavery is the subject of a petition demanding its removal 28 years after it was installed, reports The Art Newspaper.
The artist has angrily branded the demand as “censorship”.
Depicting two figures with black faces, bulging blue eyes, curly hair and oversized, bright red lips, the fresco is part of a series of murals by Di Rosa relating to French history. For the past few days, it has sparked a fierce debate.
The petition was launched by Mame-Fatou Niang, an associate professor of French Studies at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, and the French writer Julien Suaudeau. The idea came after Niang received a tweet from a French schoolgirl of African origin who was “embarrassed, pained and angry” after seeing the fresco during a school visit to the National Assembly. So far, the petition has received nearly 2,500 signatures on Change.org.
“This 'work of art' constitutes a humiliating and dehumanising insult to the millions of victims of slavery and to all their descendants,” Niang and Suaudeau write. “We ask the French National Assembly to take down this fresco, because its lingering presence at the heart of legislative power makes the original wrong more unacceptable every day.”