“An Artist, a Monument,” a program by France’s National Monuments Center, has in the past invited JR to the Panthéon, Christo and Jeanne-Claude to the Arc de Triomphe, Bob Wilson (1941-2025) to the Sainte-Chapelle and Eva Jospin to the Abbaye de Montmajour. This time, the collaboration between the Panthéon and Nicolas Daubanes began with Montluc, the former military prison in Lyon. Owned by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the facility became a memorial in 2010, commemorating those interned by the Vichy regime and German authorities during the Occupation.
Daubanes, an artist and a history enthusiast, was drawn to the monument for the role it played during World War II as well as during the Algerian War, where people who were sentenced to death were executed. While working on places of detention, the Ministry of the Armed Forces invited Daubanes to focus on 10 major national memory sites, all related to contemporary conflict.
Daubanes’ ongoing work at each site captured the attention of the Panthéon, which invited the artist for an exhibition. The Musée de l’Armée also invited Daubanes to create a dialogue between his works and its collections. The artist was entrusted with this dual project in Paris, between the civil Panthéon – which is dedicated to the memory of the nation’s great figures – and the military Panthéon, all while remaining an artist-in-residence at the Villa Medici in Rome from 2024 to 2025.
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