in the North, emblematic figures

To the rhythm of the drums, they advance slowly, swaying through the streets amid fanfares. Under their colorful canvas skirts, hidden in their imposing structures, invisible porters guide them, proud to keep a centuries-old tradition alive. “Much more than simple folkloric figures, giants are ambassadors of living traditions,” underlines Juliette Singer, director of the museum. And added: “When they parade, they bring together: we sing, we dance, we laugh.”

In Douai, the great procession in July is opened by the giant Gayant, while in Cassel, it is Reuze Papa who takes pride of place in the carnival preceding Mardi Gras. Some figures have tasty names, like Marie Belotte Buveuse de Flotte, in Roubaix. Others take on the appearance of animals: in Orchies, the Les Pourchots association has created a whole family: Porchy the father, Constance the mother and Pierric the son.

The exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts brilliantly recounts this living and popular heritage. Postcards, engravings, decorative plates, photographs are displayed there, but also, in a window, a paper mache giant’s head and a wicker body, revealing the manufacturing secrets.

The visitor also discovers the original drawings of a local child, the comic strip author François Boucq. “As a child, these colossi with their laughing faces fascinated me as much as they frightened me,” he confides. They retain, even today, a striking symbolic force.

Originally designed for an animated film commissioned by Lille 2004, European Capital of Culture, but never shown until this exhibition, these drawings tell the fabulous epic of Lydéric and Phinaert, legendary founders of the northern city.

Young and old enjoy the stories of these giants who are much more than simple relics: like others cross the seasons, they cross time, weaving with their slow and majestic steps an invisible thread between generations, between towns and villages, from the northern plains to Belgian Flanders.