1. Memorial to the abolition of slavery, Nantes( Loire-Atlantique) © PHILIPPE PIRON / LVAN
A joint creation by artist Krzysztof Wodiczko and architect Julian Bonder, the monument is the result of a long process shaped by debate, silent resistance and legitimate questioning.
From its inception, the project divided opinion. It was supported by associations representing people from France’ s overseas territories, and politically backed by Jean-Marc Ayrault, then the city’ s mayor, yet it also aroused unease and tension. Some considered its cost excessive; others felt the recently renovated Nantes History Museum was sufficient. More profoundly, the very idea of a memorial— unique in Europe— devoted entirely to this dark chapter of colonial history was unsettling. For remembrance demands confrontation with what we would rather silence, and in this case, it means bearing the weight of a profoundly shameful past.
Yet despite all this, the monument came into being— as a necessity, a response to accumulated silences, an obligation.
Built on the banks of the Loire, the Memorial unfolds as a space for reflection— a place of passage and awareness. It begins with a broad promenade bordered by glass plaques set into the ground. Each bears the name of a ship, a date, an African port of departure, and a number of captives. Together, they form a murmured litany that accompanies the rhythm of one’ s steps, an invisible map etched into the riverside. Some names stand out: La Diane, Les Trois Frères, Le Père de Famille … and later, after 1789, La Liberté, L’ Égalité, Le Ça ira— so many paradoxes that leave no one indifferent. In the very banality of these names, nothing betrays
EUROPE INSIGHT
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