New Parisian Exhibition Uses Skin Tone to Make Artwork Come to Life

With intolerance spreading across the world and extreme populism threatening the upcoming French elections, the pillars of French society have been shaken. Racism persists and prejudice is on the rise. To create awareness around this issue and to help open people’s minds, the Musée de l’homme, an emblematic museum in Paris has created “Nous Et Les Autres: Des préjuges au racisme” (Us and Them: from prejudice to racism), the museum’s first year-long exhibit, which sheds light on the scientific factors behind racist behaviour.

To promote this important exhibition, the museum has created an innovative campaign that allows everyone to become ambassadors of the exhibition by sharing one of the things that makes them so unique.

Created by Make me Pulse, one of France’s leading digital studios, CHROMA is an innovative app that detects and captures each person’s skin colour.  Using this application, the museum will then ask all of France and the whole world to become ‘the colours of the exhibition’. To come together with a friend or stranger and create their very own posters of the exhibition using their skin colours.

CHROMA allows everyone to create their own personalised posters of the exhibition using the colour of two people’s skin (theirs and a friend’s). Users can take or upload a picture of themselves and a friend. The CHROMA app then detects the two colours and digitally applies them to the poster. Users can then share their own personalised posters on social media to promote the exhibition and take a stand against racism.

The museum created a series of posters for the exhibition in partnership with renowned designer, Noma Bar. A series of striking, positive iconic visuals about racism using only two colours : a  pair of hands that rejoice, mouths in the shape of peace doves that kiss, and people of different origins that come together.

Countless French celebrities have already participated in the CHROMA experience and have created their own posters to fight racism: like international creator Philippe Starck and his wife, “Amelie” film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, international Asian pop-star Anggun, French pop singer Julie Zenatti (number 1 in France’s ITunes charts), world handball champion Olivier Girault and many others.

The museum also created a digital installation/ photo booth at the end of the exhibition where people can participate in the CHROMA experience after being moved by the exhibition.

Some of the posters that people create will even be turned into into print & outdoor that will be placed in the subway, newspapers and billboards all around Paris throughout the year. An emotional TV spot, created by Noma Bar using two-colour animation will also be aired on TV and in cinemas across France.

Through this symbolic gesture of coming together with someone of another race the museum has given France and the whole world an opportunity to make an important statement : that we are all the same and that there is no such thing as human races, only human beings.