Female Winged Victory Statues in French Algeria

Monumental statuary and memorial sculptures were erected throughout France as well as French Algeria (1830–1962) that attest to a “statuemania” exported from the metropole to their North African prize colony. After World War I, commemorative public statuary emerged from the elevated deaths of the European settler communities and the forcibly conscripted Muslim “native” troops of Algeria. Public statuary of women in both colony and metropole were usually allegorical figures such as statues of the female Winged Victory. This essay compares the interwar Winged Victory statues placed on top of the war memorial in Constantine, Algeria, erected by Algerian Jewish Sculptor Joseph Ebstein (1881–1961) to other victory statues in Algiers, Oran, Er-Rahel, and Sétif. Winged Victory sculptures tell the story of French colonial memorialization, implantation, destruction of walled Arab cities, spoliation, and heritage regimes in the service of an allegorical female sculpture.