Miss.Tic’s striking aphorisms and stenciled female silhouettes are taking pride of place in the Palais des Papes in Avignon. After Éva Jospin in 2023, the monument is hosting an exhibition dedicated to this street art pioneer, who died in 2022.
Curator Camille Lévy-Sarfati, Cécile Helle, Mayor of Avignon and Marc Simeliere, President of Avignon Tourism. • photo Marie Meunier
“This exhibition is good, culture must be assertive and meaningful“, proclaims Cécile Helle, the mayor of Avignon, referring to the turbulent political context of recent days. The chief magistrate was at the Palais des Papes to discover the new exhibition of the monument which brings together around 300 works and traces signed Miss.Tic. Radhia Aounallah is her real name. This committed artist, born in 1956 and died in 2022, was one of the emblematic figures of street art. In the 80s, she was part of the stencil movement. She was one of the only women to go spray painting.
The Miss.Tic exhibition will be on display until January 2025. • photo Marie Meunier
Since June 27 and until January 5, his work will not be visible under the open sky but in the heart of the Gothic monument of the city of the Popes. Two radically different worlds but which are married for a few months and which had already gotten along well in 2019 during the event around Ernest Pignon-Ernest. The exhibition is divided into three movements, from Miss.Tic’s often illicit beginnings in the street to the choice of legality, after 1999 and her trial for “deterioration of property by inscription, sign or drawing”. The last part will explore the artist’s entire creative process. Visitors will even be able to see his workshop located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, as it was with its furniture, its aerosols, its sketches, its radio. His work appears almost as laborious, even ritualized.
The Miss.Tic president campaign is displayed
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the curator Camille Lévy-Sarfati, the artist’s friends and the City. Throughout the visit, we discover the work of this artist whose life was punctuated by drama. Starting with the loss of her mother, her brother and her grandmother in a car accident. Miss.Tic came out of it with a disability in her right hand. This did not prevent her from choosing stencils as a means of expression. After a long preparation period, she walks the city at night and shapes the urban according to her vision. Her line stands out and challenges. Her approach places the body, the identity of a woman, her erotic force at the heart of public space. Through Miss.Tic’s drawings and aphorisms, we can guess the poet and woman of letters that she was.
The “Women of Being” series. • photo Marie Meunier
She also created a whole series on “women of being” in 2011 to pay tribute to irreverent female writers, by affixing her aphorisms to pages of their works. Miss.Tic also had fun diverting advertising slogans in a humorous way. In this period of electoral effusion, the public will be able to appreciate the “Miss.Tic president” campaign that she had started in 1988, during the presidential elections already marked by the rise of the extreme right. She reproduced it until 2017, with different forms and media. We also owe to this artist the series “Muses and men” where she puts her own spin on paintings by classic painters where the muse is the object of the male gaze.
Part of the Miss.Tic president campaign. • photo Marie Meunier
Exhibition “To life, to love by the artist Miss.Tic”, visible until January 5, 2025, at the Palais des Papes. More information by clicking here.
