L’Évasion - Wallace Fountains by Cyril Pedrosa - chapter 4

The agency in charge of Nantes’ drinking fountains wished to draw the public’s attention to the availability of water throughout the city.

It has done this through the emblematic fontaine Wallace – those magnificent green fountains found around Paris since 1871.

150 years later, Le Voyage à Nantes invited artist-author-illustrator Cyril Pedrosa to design a project involving this historical emblem of urban design, and write the next chapter to its original mythology imagined by art-istsculptor Lebourg (Born in Nantes).

For this new chapter in the story of Wallace fountains, Pedrosa has woven a tale in four chapters and four locations in the centre of Nantes: “The sculptures on these fountains are meant to embody Goodness, Charity, Simplicity, and Sobriety, carrying a dome on their shoulders. However noble and virtuous this role may be, they had neither chosen nor desired it. So, like countless other women throughout the world, the four caryatids of the Wallace fountains have patiently organized their escape…”

Through this metaphorical account of the long history of feminism and, more broadly, the history of humanity’s quest for emancipation, Pedrosa pays a respectful and poetic homage to those who seek to escape the roles assigned to them.