The Marianne
of Boisset-les-Prévanches is a sculpture by Olivier
Goulet, made from the cast face of a citizen elected in the village.
She embodies a contemporary republican figure,
rooted in a precise territory and real community, mounted on the town
hall wall near the President’s official photograph.
Unlike
most
Human Hunting Trophies with
closed eyes, Marianne’s eyes are open. Where
the others seem asleep, she watches and keeps vigil, evoking La République guidant le peuple : not a heroic
figure, but a silent, determined presence.
Chosen
collectively through a local vote, she becomes a pivot
figure, between individual and collective, citizen and
institution, portrait and emblem.
In
her polychrome version, she evokes Europe through
the stars on her blue tunic, and a small earth tattooed on her nape
recalls our shared humanity, beyond nations and
borders.
Extending
the project, Olivier Goulet created the Marianne of the
village’s eldest woman (90 years old),
introducing time, experience, and the persistence of
bodies into the republican allegory.
The
project reaches its radical form with the Marianne with
100 faces, where stacked synthetic skin face
masks create a multiplicity of faces,
a fluid and unstable identity within the
field of contemporary vanitas.
This
Marianne interrogates how faces become symbols and
poses a simple, ambiguous question :
what does this face
reveal ?
