‘Wall of Love’ Commemorates Paris Attacks

By MARTINA BELLISARIO and DONATO PAOLO MANCINI
Paris Attacks
FEB. 11, 2016
In an effort to heal their neighborhood, residents of the 10th Arrondissement invited street and graffiti artists to paint on a blocklong wall near two cafes that were attacked. Below are some of the artworks and the stories behind them.

“I was really afraid, and I felt all alone,” Diana Kami, an artist who lives in the 10^th Arrondissement with her daughter, said of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead, many in her neighborhood. The next Monday, after dropping her daughter at school, she was overwhelmed by a desire to make art.

Almost instinctively, she said, she began to paint on a wall along rue Alibert that is often used as a canvas for local street artists – and is just steps from Le Petit Cambodge and Le Carillon, two cafes targeted in the attacks.

Several mothers from her daughter’s school, just on the other side of the wall, took notice of Ms. Kami’s work and requested permission from the local government to paint the entire wall.

“We wanted to do something,” said one of them, Gaelle Giffard, who crowdfunded 500 euros from the neighborhood to cover the cost of paint.

The result is “Dessine-Moi un Bouquet,” a communitywide initiative that invited street and graffiti artists, as well as local residents and children, to cover the wall with images in response to the attacks.

One mother told Ms. Kami that the wall, nicknamed Le Mur de l’Amour, or wall of love, has had a calming effect so that she is no longer afraid to walk in the street. An elderly man told Ms. Kami that simply watching her paint helped him find peace.

For her own contribution, Ms. Kami painted a forest of trees, their branches outstretched. “In nature, the hunter protects himself in the forest,” she said, “and the tree is life. It’s to protect the neighborhood.”

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