Grandson of a convict doctor, Philippe Collin, a retired professor with a passion for history, donated to New Caledonia 27 dried clay figures, purchased by his grandfather from an inmate between 1910 and 1914. .

The statuettes about ten centimeters high, in perfect condition, represent scenes from traditional Kanak life, such as the pilou (ritual dance), or everyday moments.

"This is what we called junk, these small objects that the convicts sold to guards, doctors and other notables, to improve the ordinary", explains the president of the association Testimony of a past, manager of the historic site of Nou Island, devoted to prison, where 21,000 prisoners stayed between 1864 and the beginning of the 1920s, in the penitentiaries of Nouméa and Bourail, on Grande Terre, and the Isle of Pines.

The convicts lived in very precarious conditions, where violence, arbitrariness and the smell of death hovered.

The insurgents of the Commune of 1871 were deported there by the thousands.

Among them, the teacher and activist Louise Michel, who spent seven years (1873-1880) in New Caledonia.

The restored statuettes were gathering dust on family shelves when Philippe Collin made the link with the penal colony and his grandfather, re-reading letters in which a certain "Gérard", detained in Caledonia, asked for painting materials.

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The history buff makes it a point of honor to find the exact identity of the artist.

"It took me a year, but that's how I discovered that his name was Alexandre Gérard, that he was a communard deported at 18, and that he had ended his days in Caledonia , says Philippe Collin. For me, rediscovering his identity and ensuring that his work is exhibited is to give it back its humanity".

- "To bring out this common history" -

This donation of statuettes supports the file that the government intends to submit for the classification of the Caledonian penal colony as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"It's a plus, because we have the buildings, but we lack these objects that tell this moment in history, but this is also what Unesco is asking for", indicates Christophe Sand, archaeologist, commissioned by the government to prepare the application for registration.

Caledonia is gradually reclaiming this part of its history in a country where Kanaks and white Caledonians, many of them descendants of convicts, are often opposed.

“Today, it is our responsibility to bring out this common history, believes Mickaël Forest, member of the independence government. Because the prison is also the history of the Kanaks and other communities, these worlds were not as impermeable as we want to believe".

“The convicts mainly represented the Kanak world, underlines the historian Louis Lagarde. Yet many only saw it in images or through what comrades who were able to go out told them. But what we notice , is that they never made grotesque or caricatural representations of it. It was always a representation of the beautiful",

The inscription of the Caledonian penal colony on the World Heritage List would not be a first.

The Australian site has been classified since 2010 and includes around ten sites.

But New Caledonia is only at the very beginning of the process.

If all goes well, the file could be presented within four or five years.

© 2022 AFP