This work was produced in tribute to Samuel Paty, professor of history and geography at the Bois d'Aulne college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in Yvelines, murdered in 2020 for teaching freedom of expression to his students.
Marianne represents the French Republic and its values, as embodied by the motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Cachoux depicts France as an idealised image of a young, beautiful, strong and serene woman – a pacifist who looks to the future.
Marianne wears the traditional Phrygian cap, decorated here with an ear of wheat – symbol of a fertile, nurturing and generous France – and an olive branch, symbol of peace and prosperity. Marianne looks to the horizon with confidence. Behind her is placed an axe, evoking a strong and firm France capable of defending itself, and a rooster, the national emblem as well as an ancient Gaulish symbol. As the animal that heralds in the light of day, it embodies the end of darkness and the arrival of a new dawn. Finally, the vivid red and rose of the window behind her evoke a France which shines onto the world through culture and the arts.
Born in Homs, Syria, in 1976, Fares Cachoux studied computer engineering at the University of Aleppo, before doing his master's and doctorate in digital art and visual communication in Paris. After a ten-year stint in the Gulf, where he worked for various museums, he decided to dedicate himself definitively to art and settled back in France in 2021.
Cachoux's works tell stories using a visual vocabulary reduced to the essentials. From the war in Syria to those drowned in the Mediterranean, from the complexity of social customs in the Gulf to political caricatures, from the fragility of our democratic societies to the depletion of our environmental resources, each of his works is the reduction of an event, a situation, to its very quintessence.
A committed artist, he knows how to reach a very wide audience with simple, transparent messages. As he puts it, ‘That's where the enigma lies! You have to summarise complex events with a minimum of elements, without losing the meaning’. With a bold, minimalist style, bright colours and simple silhouettes, Cachoux puts his work at the service of freedom and human dignity.
Cachoux held his first solo exhibition in Paris in 2015, after being invited by Banksy to take part in the Dismaland exhibition (UK). Today, his work is regularly published in French and foreign newspapers such as Le Monde, Le Temps, Courrier International and the Huffington Post. His work also features in the French school curriculum and is used to teach children how to decipher political posters.
