MARIANNES
NICE CARNIVAL

Portrait of the curator and producer Annelise Stern and the photographer Sylvie Castioni in Nice

Large scale installation in public space

400,000 visitors during 2 weeks

CONCEPT

LOCATION: Place Masséna, Nice (France)

DATES: 14–28 February 2026

For the Nice Carnival's Vive la Reine edition, Marianne(s) took to public space at full scale: a 60-metre installation on Place Masséna, behind the Fontaine du Soleil, bringing together 92 committed personalities under one shared claim: freedom, equality and justice for all, carried under the hashtag #JeSuisMarianne.

Marianne(s) exists across France, and each presentation roots itself in the place that hosts it. In Nice, that meant an installation built for a festival crowd, free and open, standing in the middle of the city's biggest public gathering of the year.

Large-scale public art installation in Nice in South of France produced and curated by the artist agency NANA Annelise Stern

NANA produced and curated the Nice presentation, working with Sylvie Castioni and the Carnaval de Nice team, led by director Caroline Constantin, alongside the Mairie de Nice, to adapt Marianne(s) for its largest public-space showing yet.

MARIANNE(S)

92 portraits (media figures, athletes, artists, activists and women with singular, anonymous stories) each wear the Phrygian cap, the symbol of liberty. Anne Roumanoff, Suzane, Claudia Tagbo, Sylvie Tellier, Frédérique Bel, Reem Kherici and Paralympic champion Nantenin Keita sit alongside women whose names the public doesn't already know, a living mosaic of French society, each portrait a different reading of the same republican values.