In the large scale installation À chaque stencil une revolution, Latifa Echakhch conjures up the revolutionary spirit that shook Europe and the United States in the sixties. The title of the work is a quote from Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), the first president of the Palestinian National Authority, in reference to the strikes of May 1968 in France and the North American protests against the Vietnam war. In those years, carbon paper and stencil machines were used to print leaflets and revolutionary messages. Over time, printing techniques such as the photocopier and digital media made them obsolete. Echakhch lined the walls of her installation with numerous sheets of dark blue carbon paper that have not been written on. Then, she sprinkled them with alcohol that dripped and stained the floor with blue ink, creating variations in the texture of the carbon paper. Leaving aside the references to Yves Klein in the performative element of her gesture and in the blue colour, the work is a subtle monument to the social revolutions of the recent past, while also offering a critique of revolutionary power today. This work perfectly reflects the critical and poetic nature of the works of this artist born in Morocco and raised and educated in France. Latifa Echakhch often uses national symbols and elements from everyday life without any artistic value, which, when they are decontextualised, take on a singular critical power. Through a new use of apparently banal and commonplace objects, Echakhch reveals the social and national codes that are concealed behind them. Prayer mats, tea cups, official immigration papers, letter envelopes and stencilled sheets symbolise the effects of post-colonial policies on people’s lives and identities.