A little girl from William Bouguereau’s 1886 painting ‘Au pied de la falaise’ looks out over the city of Memphis from the side of a seven-story building, freed from the original work’s confines within the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. French street artist Julien de Casabianca is known for moving the subjects of famous paintings from the hallowed walls of perfectly-lit museums and into the streets, wheat pasting them many times larger than life onto urban surfaces. This particular monumental work coincides with the artist’s exhibition and workshop at the Brooks Museum.

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Brooklyn Street Art asked de Casabianca why this piece resonates for the artist. “She seems melancholic, I wanted to give her a second life in the real life, liberate her from the frame,” he says. “I feel always guilty when I leave from a wall where I pasted a child, as in Nuart Aberdee in Scotland, because even they are giants, I feel they are so fragile in this violent world and in this contemporary world. She’s a time traveller, she doesn’t know our new world and she’s probably surprised and moved.”

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It’s not the only character from within the museum to come to life in the streets of Memphis; the artist met with museum officials earlier this year to choose 20 figures from the Brooks’ permanent collection to place around the city. Other paintings chosen for the project include a two-story installation of Cloar’s Wedding Party and a 20-foot high selection from Luca Giordano’s The Slaying of the Medusa.

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De Casabianca has wheat pasted works like this all over the world, in fact, as part of his ongoing series “Outing Project.” You can find out where to see the works in person and follow their progress on Instagram.

Everyone knows about the Statue of Liberty, the Easter Island Moai heads, Mount Rushmore and the Sphinxes of Ancient Egypt, but not all monstrous monuments were built in centuries past. Colossal statues of even larger proportions are still built all over the world in modern times, from the many massive Buddhas of Asia to mythological creatures like merlions and shapeshifting horses. Though some of them are among the world’s tallest statues, these 7 are relatively lesser known, built between 1994 and 2017. (Of course, the former Soviet Union boasts so many oversized monuments, they’re in a category of their own.)

Mao Zedong’s Head, Changsha, China

The massive head of young Chinese dictator Mao Zedong gazes down at the city of Changsha, seemingly bursting from the rock in a grassy park. Built in 2007 by the Hunan People’s Government, it strays from the usual balding representations of Mao’s look later in life. It’s 105 feet tall and made of 8,000 pieces of granite, and here’s the kicker: it cost $300 million. Another giant statue of Chairman Mao, known as ‘Mega Mao,’ was built in Henan province in 2016 ridiculed so much for its excess that it was torn down soon after it went viral on the internet.

The Man Meets the Sea, Denmark

Four stark white figures stand 30 feet tall while seated, standing out when the sky is blue and virtually disappearing in cloudy weather. The ‘Man Meets the Sea’ sculpture is visible to ships arriving in or departing from Esbjerg Harbor on the southwest coast of Denmark. Created by Svend Wiig Hansen in celebration of the town of Esbjerg’s 100th anniversary as an independent municipality in 1994, the sculpture “portrays the meeting between pure, unspoilt mankind and nature. Man, innocent as from his mother’s womb. Man before rising up and beginning to act. That, according to Wiig Hansen, was where things started to go wrong – when man got ‘dirt’ on his hands.”

The Kelpies at Helix Park, Scotland

A pair of horse heads known as The Kelpies by sculptor Andy Scott emerged near the River Carron in the Falkirk Council Area of Scotland in October 2013 to celebrate a new extension of the Forth and Clyde Canal at Helix Park. Named for mythological Scottish shapeshifter that transform from horses into hooded humans, the statues pay tribute to the many horses that have helped Scotland become what it is today. Scott first created 9-foot-high versions in his studio, which were scanned by lasers and reproduced by steel fabricators. He envisions them as “water-borne, towering gateways into The Helix, the Forth and Clyde Canal and Scotland, translating the legacy of the area into proud equine guardians.”

Guan Yu God of War, Jingzhou, China

Quite stunning both for its proportions and its artistic merit, this enormous depiction of the Chinese god of war looks like he could start swinging his ‘Green Dragon Crescent Blade’ around at any second. Unveiled in 2017 in his namesake park in Jingshou, China, Guan Yu stands 190 feet tall, weighs over 1,320 tons and consists of over 4,000 bronze strips. He stands atop an 86,111-square-foot museum. Though he’s now been deified, Guan Yu was a real person, a general serving under warlord Liu Bei in the late Eastern Han dynasty. Known as a great warrior, he governed the Jing Province for seven years before he was captured and executed by a power-seeking betrayer in 220 C.E. His real-life exploits are rather overshadowed by myths that have sprung up around him, depicting him as the ultimate human embodiment of strength, loyalty and righteousness.

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The Modern Colossal 7 Lesser Known Monumental Wonders Of The World

Treating the Earth like a canvas and natural objects like rocks, sticks, sand and ice as art materials, we alter the natural environment to reflect ourselves and our own artistic impulses – even if only temporarily, until these works of land-based art are erased by nature itself.

Animated Land Art by Paul Johnson

For his ‘Earthworks in Motion’ series, artist Paul Johnson takes inspiration from such legendary land artists as Andy Goldsworthy and Jim Denevan, using some of the same techniques but crafting them into stop-motion animations filmed in parks and nature preserves around Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ash Dome by David Nash

In 1977, sculptor David Nash secretly planted and trained a circle of 22 ash trees to grow into a shape resembling a vortex on an area of land in Wales. 40 years later, they’ve grown enough for the shape to be discernible. Nash says that at the time, during the Cold War and other unrest, planting something that couldn’t be properly enjoyed until the 21st century seemed like a leap of faith.

Van Gogh’s ‘Olive Trees’ Planted in a Field

Vincent Van Goh’s masterpiece painting ‘Olive Trees,’ completed in 1889, comes to life – literally – in a Minneapolis field as artist Stan Herd uses nature as his canvas and paints. The piece was viewable from the air during autumn 2015 and then mowed down in concentric circles reminiscent of Van Gogh’s painting strokes.

Seven Magic Mountains by Ugo Rondinone

Each of Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s ‘Seven Magic Mountains’ made of stacked limestone stands between 30 and 35 feet tall painting in dayglo yellow, red, pink, silver and other colors. They’re set just south of Las Vegas as a monumental work of land art, installed in May 2016 and due to remain in place until May 2018, so there’s still time to see it in person.

Snow Murals by Simon Beck

Simon Beck uses snowshoes to manually imprint dazzling patterns and shapes into snowy fields, photographs them from above and then allows them to be blown away, covered by more snow or trampled. It can take up to 5,000 steps an hour for 10 hours at a time to complete an average piece.

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The Earth As A Canvas 25 Monumental Works Of Land Based Art

Experience monumental sculpture like you never have before with a new 15-story tunnel slide that spirals around London’s ArcelorMittal Orbit monument, set to be the world’s longest. The UK is really pushing its public art to the next level by adding a record breaker to a record breaker, as the sculpture already holds the title of tallest in the nation. The slide wraps around the sculpture 12 times, and it takes forty seconds to get from the very top to the bottom in a trip through the tube.

Opening to the public on June 24th, 2016, the Carsten Höller-designed slide features both opaque and transparent sections so riders get brief glimpses of the London skyline before plunging back into darkness. A tight corkscrew section snakes its way around the red geometric structure, ending in a straight run to the ground. The slide’s total length is 584 feet.

London erected the strange and rather controversial ArcelorMittal for the 2012 Summer Olympics, offering panoramic views of the city from its location in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Tickets for the attraction are already on sale for £15 ($22), with a limited number available each day, and you can book more than one ride at a time.