Visual Counter-Narrative

CONTRE-RÉCIT VISUEL – Visual Counter-Narrative | Performance de Halida Boughriet
©halidaboughriet | Intervention sur les Allégories Coloniales, Escalier Monumental, Marseille
2026

When walls conceal, the street reveals. 

In Marseille, Visual Counter-Narrative transforms the monumental staircase of Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles built during the height of French colonialism and a symbol of colonial propaganda into a space of memory and resistance.

The drapery deployed by the artist does not hide; it subverts and disrupts the sculptures of Louis Botinelly, creating a performative gesture that places the feminine in dialogue with a European patriarchal monument, questioning both gender and colonial power.

The printed fabrics are not decorative they are acts of subversion. They clothe the monument while interrupting the official narrative, opening the possibility of a visual counter-narrative.

On Les Colonies d’Afrique (1925), Marie Koré, icon of the Women’s March on Grand-Bassam, and Aoua Keïta, Pan-African resistance figure, are superimposed onto colonial archives, weaving a palimpsest where subaltern histories speak.

On Les Colonies d’Asie (1925), Võ Thị Sáu—executed during the anti-colonial struggle against French rule—the King’s dancers, young coryphées, and Khong women with their children of Phnom Penh reclaim public space through archival materials and colonial imagery.

Conceived and performed by Halida Boughriet, this work proposes an alternative form of performance, inviting viewers to reconsider history, memory, and colonial representations in public space.

Performance: Halida Boughriet

Photo & Video Credit: Rodrigo Van Peteghem ©RODRIGO,

Photo : @halidaboughriet