La Caravane

2013

Aluminium
Diverse measurements

Caen has been subject to a very tumultuous twentieth century: a city on the frontline, its citizens being faced with difficult choices, either to stay but possibly lose their lives or leave all they know and care for and head out into an unknown future. For the Place Saint-Saveur, Atelier Van Lieshouthas created a sculpture that symbolizes this ever-present human dilemma: the choice between the known and the unknown, between security and insecurity, between tradition and progress.

For Place Saint-Saveur, we proposed a sculptural group consisting of human-like shapes, symbolizing the ‘Bourgeois de Caen’. The group appears to be huddled together, like a line of figures that flow over in each other like a Laocoon, sometimes realistic, sometimes abstract. The figures are not heavy, however, but light, airy; people will be able to see trough them and walk between them.

The figures symbolize the different emotions that people go through in a time of conflict: heroism, fear, rebellion, survival, flight, compassion, cowardice, joy, loneliness – a mass of humans, insecure, doubtful and chaotic. Opposed to this, the statue of Louis XVI seems to symbolize security, power and order. At the same time, however, his image is a leftover from the Ancient-Regime.