Sous les pavés la plage!

(2020)

A downloadable, printable poster to spark a revolution in todays Gen Z kids.

Self portraits of children, ranging from 7-22 years of age, were digitally manipulated amongst my own illustrations (inspired by the work of situationists Asger Jorn and Jean Dubuffet), the slogan was then screen printed on.

I was inspired by the Paris uprisings of 1968, during which they adopted the phrase ‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’, meaning ‘Under the paving stones, there is a beach!’. It became a rallying cry and was used on placards, after discovering sand beneath the paving stones that they had ripped up to use as barricades. Essentially what they were saying was ‘this system doesn’t work, let’s go back to basics’, which I feel is a phrase that can be very much linked to Gen Z, and it's feelings towards the way in which generations before us have dealt with a whole host of current issues.
I wanted it to look old school angsty - angry but passionate. As a generation, we often aren’t taken seriously, and I think one of the reasons for this is that we are so full of love. We are inclusive and are aware of the struggles individuals face, as a result we are often called ‘snowflakes’. I took this idea of angry passionate love and translated it into these angry bursting heart motifs, which I layered amongst the self-portraits I had collected, in a colour scheme inspired by Extinction Rebellion placards.

The below images are of my development work that lead up to the final print.