Liberté Fanées – Faded Liberties

“The flag has faded — the spirit hasn’t.”

Liberté Fanées – Faded Liberties evolves around the ghost of the French tricolour — the once-vivid blue, white, and red of the Republic’s flag — now transformed into a diagonal sequence of fading hues. Instead of a literal banner, I paint its emotional afterimage: the cool blue has dissolved into shadowed violet and burnt umber; the white into weathered orange light; and the red into electric pinks and bleeding magentas.

The diagonal arrangement traces the path of ideals tilting and eroding under time and pressure. The flag has not vanished — it has simply aged, reabsorbed into the fabric of lived experience. The drips and overspray transform political symbol into human emotion, suggesting that liberty, equality, and fraternity are not static principles but ongoing struggles that fade, renew, and fade again.

 Across the work, the stencilled words — LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ — repeat like distant chants. The layered honeycombs and coded motifs (some recalling cultural or mathematical order) act as scaffolds of meaning beneath the corrosion. It is both street wall and sacred relic — revolutionary wallpaper after a century of weather.

The composition vibrates with contradiction: raw graffiti energy collides with quiet elegy. The tricolour remains, but refracted — a metaphor for ideals outlasting their slogans.

s – Faded Liberties evolves around the ghost of the French tricolour — the once-vivid blue, white, and red of the Republic’s flag — now transformed into a diagonal sequence of fading hues. Instead of a literal banner, Len van Zyl paints its emotional afterimage: the cool blue has dissolved into shadowed violet and burnt umber; the white into weathered orange light; and the red into electric pinks and bleeding magentas.

The diagonal arrangement traces the path of ideals tilting and eroding under time and pressure. The flag has not vanished — it has simply aged, reabsorbed into the fabric of lived experience. The drips and overspray transform political symbol into human emotion, suggesting that liberty, equality, and fraternity are not static principles but ongoing struggles that fade, renew, and fade again.

 Across the work, the stencilled words — LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ — repeat like distant chants. The layered honeycombs and coded motifs (some recalling cultural or mathematical order) act as scaffolds of meaning beneath the corrosion. It is both street wall and sacred relic — revolutionary wallpaper after a century of weather.

The composition vibrates with contradiction: raw graffiti energy collides with quiet elegy. The tricolour remains, but refracted — a metaphor for ideals outlasting their slogans.

Liberté Fanées – Faded Liberties evolves around the ghost of the French tricolour — the once-vivid blue, white, and red of the Republic’s flag — now transformed into a diagonal sequence of fading hues. Instead of a literal banner, Len van Zyl paints its emotional afterimage: the cool blue has dissolved into shadowed violet and burnt umber; the white into weathered orange light; and the red into electric pinks and bleeding magentas.

 The diagonal arrangement traces the path of ideals tilting and eroding under time and pressure. The flag has not vanished — it has simply aged, reabsorbed into the fabric of lived experience. The drips and overspray transform political symbol into human emotion, suggesting that liberty, equality, and fraternity are not static principles but ongoing struggles that fade, renew, and fade again.

Across the work, the stencilled words — LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ — repeat like distant chants. The layered honeycombs and coded motifs (some recalling cultural or mathematical order) act as scaffolds of meaning beneath the corrosion. It is both street wall and sacred relic — revolutionary wallpaper after a century of weather.

 The composition vibrates with contradiction: raw graffiti energy collides with quiet elegy. The tricolour remains, but refracted — a metaphor for ideals outlasting their slogans.