After 5 years, Iljin’s work had deteriorated considerably on the company building. A new production has just seen the light of day.
Street art is a more or less ephemeral artistic expression. The average duration of a mural is about 10 years. The beautiful work of Iljin, a world-renowned artist, will have lasted barely 5 years. And yet, a patch-up added a bit of life to it, continuing to decorate the building of companies or union house, also called the Cayrol building, on the Jean-Jaurès esplanade, in Decazeville.
The Community of Communes decided to finance another one (the rental of the nacelle was the responsibility of the municipality of Decazeville) in order to replace it because urban art continues to gain popularity. Since 2019, the Decazeville Basin has been one of the recognized street art sites in France. Every year, a relatively large public comes to visit and discover the colorful walls of the territory.
“To assert truths”
It was the artist RNST, from Dijon, who brought his vision of things, subscribing to this essentially individual mode of expression. He began his career in urban art at the end of the 1990s, first with graffiti and then through stencils and posters. Contrary to what some like to say, for this multidisciplinary creator who paints with spray paint, art should not be framed. For about fifteen years, he has freed himself from his walls to “assert truths that block political correctness, and propose an alternative to a purely decorative discipline”.
RNST has produced numerous works in France and Europe, often addressing current events, sensitive subjects and social divides. According to him, “there is no artistic initiative without commitment, no commitment without action, no action without combat” and that is why everything that goes beyond the norm suits him like a glove.
For his work in Decazeville, where red predominates, RNST was inspired by posters from the Spanish Civil War, a very strong period in terms of iconography and militant graphics, and of course, was steeped in the history of the Basin.
He explains: “This fresco is part of my work oriented towards social struggles. It seems important to me that artists re-appropriate a form of activism. Whether we like it or not, art can be political, especially in public spaces in direct contact with people. The interest of my work lies in why I paint in a certain place and why I do a certain thing. The interaction with the place remains essential. This image takes up codes of the Resistance, to create is to resist, to resist is also to create, adding the union struggle.”
Each graffiti artist is free for his subject and appropriates the street in a sense of artistic communication. Everyone is also free to see what he feels: a message; a tribute to the suffering of miners and metalworkers; a look from the past; a bubble of current events or simply a work of art…
