A Mural for Biodiversity

As part of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, the European cooperation network ACT – Art Climate Transition, of which COAL, French referent in the field of art and ecology, is a member and Planète Émergences, a key player in the field of art in the public space in Marseille, has inaugurated a monumental mural at the L’Écomotive Café, in front of the Marseille Saint Charles train station. This project is part of Les Murs d’Audubon. 

Les Murs d’Audubon, originally called the Audubon Mural Project is an art movement in the public space which consists in painting, on the walls of the city, murals representing birds threatened by climate change, in the tradition of the ornithologist and naturalist and Franco-American artists Jean-Jacques Audubon. Jean-Jacques Audubon is known for having, in the 19th century, studied hundreds of birds, which he represented on naturalistic plates of extraordinary and absolutely fascinating pictorial quality and brought them together in the great book of birds of America where 435 different species are represented and which has really become a source of inspiration for many artists and naturalist after him.

This movement was initiated in 2014 by the National Audubon Society, the Society for the Protection of American Birds and the Gitler Gallery & _ a gallery dedicated to street art and based in Harlem, USA, where Audubon grew up and is buried. The movement has grown tremendously, and there are now nearly a hundred murals in the United States in NY and elsewhere. On the occasion of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, and as part of the VIVANT Season that COAL has implemented for the World Conservation Congress, COAL initiates Les Murs d’Audubon in France. 

Together, ACT, COAL and Planète Emergences have chosen both the extraordinary wall in front of the Marseille central train station to work with the Greek artist Fikos who takes us back to the cultural origins of the Phocaean city and more broadly to Europe and combines in an exceptional way the technique of Byzantine wall painting and contemporary street art and has managed to appropriate and renew this art of composition dear to Audubon, by mixing birds from Europe and the Mediterranean and original drawings by Audubon himself. 

This mural will now be the memory, for the months and years to come it will welcome visitors who arrive at Marseille Saint Charles train station and will remain a citizen and creative symbol in the face of the massive erosion of biodiversity and in particular the dramatic decline of bird species.