Next Future logo

Liberty Leading the People

Barthélémy Toguo

18 Jun 2010

In front of the Gulbenkian Museum

Free admission

"Liberty leading the people” by BARTHÉLÉMY TOGUO (Cameroon, 1967) is a work that typifies the multidisciplinary efforts of this artist – sculpture, painting, drawing, performance – which he has been devoting for a long time now to themes linked to exile and the south-north migratory flows.

Photo by Pauliana Pimentel

For this Programme, Barthélemy Toguo has conceived a work that he describes as ‘monumental’, in which he enacts the difficulties faced by a people in their attempts to gain their freedom. Freely inspired upon the work of Eugene Delacroix (Liberty leading the people, 1830), this installation symbolises the hard-earned victory of a people, who, despite the victorious flags that they raise and which flutter in the wind, continue to suffer and to be martyred. For this reason, the artist wishes the public to have direct access to the work and hopes that the meaning will be immediately understandable to them.