Statue of Victor Schœlcher

About

Victor Schœlcher's statue is a bronze sculpted group paying tribute to Victor Schœlcher for his role in the second abolition of slavery in France in 1848. Directed in 1896 by Louis-Ernest Barrias, the work was inaugurated the following year in Cayenne, Guyana, currently French overseas department but at the time colony of France, where it practised the black trade. The statue represents Schelcher accompanied by a newly liberated slave.

Although protected from historical monuments since 1995, she has been criticized for her paternalistic aesthetics and her invisibilization of the role of slaves in abolition. First symbolically masked on the margins of the 2017 social movement, she was vandalized and debunked in 2020, in a context of disputed management of the Covid-19, reactions to George Floyd's murder, and a desire to decolonize public space.