@goinart est passé à Grenoble pour poser son sublime pochoir "Bad Religion ?".
— Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes (@GStreetartfest) July 21, 2021
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🎨 "Bad Religion?" de @goinart
🚩2 rue Hébert, centre – ville, @VilledeGrenoble
❗ Fresque réalisée hors le cadre du @GStreetartfest
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📸 @Jack_Sberla #goin #goinart #muslim #stigmatisation pic.twitter.com/MCexa50nXK
The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region will not be sidetracked. It has decided to withdraw its subsidies for the cultural festival Street art fest Grenoble Alpes, as France Bleu reported on Friday January the 28th. The reason for the anger is a stencil fresco depicting a veiled woman and a yellow star reading “muslim”. However, this work, created by the artist Goin, has been in the Rue Hébert in Grenoble for several months and is not part of the festival.
Via a statement quoted by France Bleu, the region explained the reasons that had led it to make such a decision: “Apart from the historical lie transported, this artistic provocation, as unacceptable as it is dangerous, only serves the extremes and constitutes an incitement to hatred and violence”.
For his part, the founder and director of the street art festival – Jérôme Catz – asked the region to revise its decision. Any normally educated person who makes a decision based on false information takes it back,” he told local radio. “Or the decision is dishonest, but far be it from me to believe that they are dishonest. Or it is a pretext, but I don’t see what they could accuse us of”.
The region was to provide the festival with 10 000 euros out of a total budget of 600 000 euros, as reported by the media. Even if the withdrawal does not significantly affect the organisation of the festival, it is rather the gesture that worries Jérôme Catz. “This festival was able to bring together subsidies from the city of Grenoble, the metropolitan region and the region, which are politically neutral. That made us proud,” he continued. “They all agreed that the importance of this event was recognised”.
The work, which has been on display in Grenoble for eight months, has only recently been disturbing, as the director of the Grenoble Alpes Street Art Fest tells our journalists. “The work has an impassioned message, indeed. The name of the work is “Bad religion?”, as if the artist were asking if there are people today who are stigmatised because of their religion,” he argued. He concluded, not without bitterness, by saying, “For me, it’s clearly a matter of the political agenda of the media, which, strangely enough, comes just before the presidential elections.” On Thursday, the fresco was damaged: the woman’s face and the star were painted over with black paint.