Art, Oil And Arrests In Paris
By Jess Worth for New Internationalist Magazine - Art met protest in the Louvre today, as six performers ritualistically spilled ‘oil’ on the gleaming marble floor. As security guards, police and gun-toting soldiers looked on menacingly, the black-clad figures removed their shoes and socks, and walked ‘oily’ footprints in circles, to symbolise the polluting influence that two oil companies wield through their sponsorship of Paris’s most iconic museum. Singing ‘Total and Eni, out of the Louvre, allez allez allez!’ they held black umbrellas aloft, mirroring a much larger action that was happening outside, simultaneously.