Five years after Ernest Pignon-Ernest, political and poetic street art is making a comeback among the popes.
Radhia Aounallah (1956-2022), aka Miss. Tic, finds herself at the center of a major retrospective. “À la vie à l’Amor” traces more than thirty years of work by this child of the 18th arrondissement of Paris. A perfectionist graffiti artist whose identity was a mystery for a long time, like Bansky. Underground but just as present in art fairs and galleries, Miss. Tic was the only woman among the pioneers of urban art in France.
For many, the artist remains an aphorist who diverted advertising slogans to accompany, on the walls, and in biting sentences, her sexy stencilled silhouettes. “We are neither right nor left, we are in trouble,” she said. A “punchline” that seems to speak to many French people in 2024…
In the great chapel of the Palais des Papes, the gardens, the room of the Great Treasury or even the Saint-Jean chapel, the medieval monument is crossed from one side to the other by its puns in abundance (“You will beg for news” ), but also his sketches and work notebooks. At the beginning of the journey, the artist’s gesture seems secondary to the literary messages. As if a cousin of Ben had taken power over the image. Sometimes the two intertwine, as on these individual tributes to her heroines, from Duras to Despentes. Sacred women of… being. But in this place, precisely, the tributes in question seem a little drowned in the immensity of the palace.
The climax comes to life, obviously, in the Great Chapel, with a profusion of very aesthetic proposals. At the very bottom, an immense iron Tower of Babel houses imposing works. Here again, textual inspiration reigns supreme: “poetry is a luxury of first necessity.” Miss. Tic had a sense of formula, even when she wasn’t working on the facades. “It is on the walls of ordinary exclusion that I have thrown here and there a few notes in the symphony of grayness.” Visiting his workshop, as it was at the time of his death, in 2022, allows you to delve into his aspirations. From June 27, the last room of the exhibition, a wooden cabin, one of its favorite supports, is preparing to become the field of expression for the most inspired visitors.
“Before going to bomb in the street, Miss.Tic was doing tests in the workshop”
Camille Lévy-Sarfati is the exhibition curator of “A la vie à l’Amor”. In Tunis, she is the co-founder of the Nessiji association, which promotes the artistic scene locally and internationally.
WOMEN’S DESIRE AT THE CENTER
“What Miss. Tic offers us are windows towards the imagination, towards critical thinking, towards somewhere else, towards a better. This is the role of art and poetry. She believed in this transformative power and was keen to transform the city to, she said, ‘color the contours of the city’. But she also wanted to act at the heart of the city, to speak of the dignity of women and people, and to place. the desire of women at the heart of the public space. Her work is carnal.”
CREATE SURPRISE
“Miss. Tic had been part of two theater companies. In fact, there was a real theatricality in her work. She didn’t go into the street to bomb the walls, it wasn’t a spontaneous action. There was a lot of preparatory work in her workshop, tests, around the staging. She wanted to sublimate the ordinary, using mailboxes, trash cans and electrical boxes as elements of the decor. to arouse surprise, and it is on this in particular that the scenographer Pascal Rodriguez relied for this exhibition.”
From June 27 to January 5, 2025 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Palais des Papes, Avignon. https://palais-des-papes.com
