Along the axis connecting Place de la Concorde to the Seine, something unusual has appeared this summer: a monumental Marianne emerging from the colonnade of the Palais-Bourbon, home of the French Assemblée Nationale. It is called Marianne rêve and is a temporary installation by Seth Globepainter, one of the most recognisable street artists on the international scene, invited by Assemblée president Yaël Braun-Pivet to occupy one of the most symbolic institutional spaces in Paris.

The work depicts a young Marianne keeping watch over the horizon, emerging from a wave in the shape of a tricolour cockade that spreads across the entire colonnade. The figure has no face. She does not look back at the viewer, does not impose herself, does not deliver speeches. She moves forward, and in moving forward leaves an open space for whoever looks at her: her features, her gaze, her identity are left to the imagination. It is a deliberate choice on Seth’s part — in describing the project, he speaks explicitly of wanting to restore the republican Marianne to her original function, that of a collective symbol in which everyone can recognise themselves.

Seth Globepainter has always carried a strong human and poetic dimension: his murals populate peripheries and urban centres around the world with figures gazing into the distance, absorbed children, silhouettes suspended between dream and reality. Marianne rêve brings this sensibility into an unprecedented context, that of neoclassical institutional architecture, and does so without forcing anything. The installation feels natural within the space, as though the figure had always been there, waiting to be seen.

Visible from Place de la Concorde and the quais of the Seine, the work will remain on the colonnade until 28 September, open to anyone passing by or visiting the Assemblée. A public work in the fullest sense: not for a specialist audience, not for those who already know the artist’s name, but for anyone who walks that stretch of Paris and looks up.