For Paris Design Week 2025, maison parisienne gallery presented Coraux de la Liberté, a monumental installation by textile artist Aude Franjou, at the Colonne de Juillet, a national monument located on Place de la Bastille.

Originally scheduled to run from September 4 to 13, the exhibition proved so popular with the public that it was extended until September 21, to coincide with the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine.

Made entirely of linen fiber, the installation consists of hundreds of coral branches that emerge from the vaults and spread out to the top. A chromatic gradient guides the eye from the immaculate white of the devitalized corals to a deep red, embodying their regeneration. This transition symbolizes death and rebirth, in a powerful metaphor for resilience.

Aude Franjou’s work is rooted in research into living things, their slow growth, and their capacity for rebirth. She sculpts textile material with a technique inherited from tapestry, using raw linen, under tension, to create petrified organic forms. Through color, she reveals volume and marks life. Coraux de la Liberté is part of a recent cycle by the artist devoted to corals, which began with the work 2°C.

Coraux de la Liberté, like an immersive reef, pays tribute to the history of the July Column, an iconic monument under the aegis of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN). Originally designed to house a monumental fountain celebrating the arrival of water in Paris, this place steeped in memory now sees another form of flow: that of creation, of living matter, of freedom celebrated in the slow elevation of a craftsmanship.