French artist Rémi Tournier has completed “En attendant la mer” (“Waiting for the Sea”), a 12-by-6.5-metre acrylic mural for the 2026 edition of Walls&Love in Valence, France.
Painted at 151 rue Faventine, the work takes its point of departure from the building’s unusual form. Tournier describes the structure as resembling a ship: seen from above, he says, it appears like an ocean liner stranded in the middle of the city, waiting desperately for the sea.
Image via https://www.instagram.com/p/Dc79AqBgmyv/
He answers that architectural prompt with a still life in restrained beige and blue tones. A small boat, held among porcelain objects, becomes the central image of a wider reflection on personal dislocation. As Tournier explains, “En attendant la mer” addresses the feeling of being carried along by a life that does not resemble one’s own—an extended period of adaptation in which the present is endured while the mind remains elsewhere.
The image is deliberately modest rather than monumental in its symbolism. The boat is not presented as a triumphant vessel, but as something temporarily immobilised: caught in the domestic arrangement, yet still imagined as capable of floating again. It gives the mural its quiet tension between resignation, patience and the possibility of movement.
Tournier painted the work from August 22 to 27 as part of Walls&Love’s fourth edition, which brought a sequence of large-scale murals and temporary interventions to Valence between August 22 and September 13, 2026. The festival is organised by Sorry Graffiti and has developed a growing route of murals across the city since its first edition in 2023.
Images via @remi_tournier__ on Instagram.
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