French President Emmanuel Macron has filed a legal complaint in response to a painting depicting him beheaded with his neck dripping blood.
The government was said to believe the art piece could be considered an incitement to violence against the President.
On February 4, the three artists of the Kolèktif Rézistans collective in Guadeloupe who were behind the piece were notified of the complaint.
“Blow”, stated one of them, reacted to the legal action on social media: “I don’t know what to think about that.”
The artwork was part of the Exposé.e.s au chlordécone (Exposed to Chlordecone) exhibition at the Centre des Arts, located in the French overseas territory Guadeloupe.
Chlordecone was a controversial pesticide once used in the French Caribbean.
Kolèktif Awtis Rézistans has become known for addressing significant socio-political issues through provocative art.
The painting in question, titled Non-lieu, showed a figure holding Macron’s severed head, apparently meant to represent a 2023 judicial decision regarding the chlordecone pesticide scandal.
The germicide was reportedly used in banana plantations in Martinique and Guadeloupe in the French West Indies until 1993, to control the banana weevil.
In January 2023, French public health judges dismissed charges in the case but acknowledged the incident was a “health scandal”.
In 2019, Macron had declared that chlordecone was not carcinogenic.
Despite that, a 2021 study by Inserm, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, found a strong link between exposure to the pesticide and an increased risk of prostate cancer.
According to a recent report by French public health authority Santé publique France, around 90 per cent of adults in Guadeloupe and Martinique carried traces of chlordecone in their systems.
The case mirrored a similar incident involving graffiti artist “Lekto” in Avignon, who in 2022 faced prosecution for creating a mural of economist Jacques Attali manipulating a Macron-Pinocchio figure.
