French Students Turn Paris Monuments Into Protest Canvases

In the spring of 1968, French students did more than march. They put the country’s statues to work. After Paris Nanterre University was shuttered on May 2, demonstrators took to the Sorbonne, hanging portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Chairman Mao from the pillars of its 17th-century facade and wedging red revolutionary flags into the statues of Louis Pasteur and Victor Hugo. On May 13, during a national general strike, protesters climbed Léopold Morice’s 1883 “Monument à la République,” the figure of Marianne, and made it a gathering ground.

Now, French student demonstrators are returning to many of the same grievances, from underresourced schools to a worsening cost-of-living crisis, and to the same tactic, according to a report from Hyperallergic. Earlier this month, protesters draped the Monument à la République in a white garment reading, “Neglected high schools, youth sacrificed,” a denunciation of poor labor conditions, staff shortages and grueling hours in the education system.

The actions have reached some of France’s most prominent institutions. On October 19, dozens of students from the École du Louvre, the arts school housed in the Louvre Palace, blocked the main entrance of the Louvre Museum. In Marseille, a separate group knocked a bust of Marianne to the floor after breaking into City Hall.

Other protesters have dressed statues in the garments of earlier movements. On October 17, organizers put Marianne in a yellow vest bearing the message “2026: The police mutilates high schoolers,” a nod to the gilets jaunes who protested rising fuel prices from 2018 to 2020. According to Hyperallergic, the display pointed to widening fissures between the public and the police, who have overwhelmingly arrested minors and injured hundreds of students since the protests began. French rights groups and lawyers have accused police of inflicting “war-like injuries” on teenagers, including a 14-year-old boy maimed by a tear gas grenade in a Paris suburb.

At the Place de la République, demonstrators streaked the eyes of the allegorical figures of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity with black tears, suggesting a country adrift from the principles of the late 18th-century revolution.

The tactic is not uniquely French. During the Black Lives Matter protests, activists around the world toppled or defaced monuments to colonial and racist figures, including Christopher Columbus and King Leopold II. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters transformed a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee with graffiti, performance and projections. In 2020, protesters in France draped a black cloth over a statue of the colonial administrator General Joseph Gallieni.

The current movement is also drawing connections to other causes. In Toulouse, protesters stuck a Palestinian flag atop a statue of Joan of Arc and wrapped a yellow vest around it. Authorities promptly removed both, setting off a fierce online debate over how statues can and should be used in protest. Some saw an attack on French national identity; others read the flag as a bridge between related human rights struggles.

The echoes of 1968 are explicit. Banners and protest art have borrowed the era’s language, including a riff on Gen-Z slogans, “Generation 67 brings you May 68,” and a warning to authorities: “If you screw us over (or pull a fast one on us), we will give you a May 68.”