Miss.Tic – A LA VIE, A L'AMOR

A pioneering French street artist, Miss.Tic was above all a poetess in the city. Hers was a veritable literary, societal and philosophic project, inscribed in spray paint on walls, canvases and sheet metal, for over forty years.

"Saisir dans l’éphémère / le désordre d’un graffiti / l’éternel défi d’exister" (Capture in the ephemeral / the disorder of graffiti / the eternal challenge to exist) was one of the first aphorisms Miss.Tic wrote on the walls of Paris in the early 1980s, and it is perhaps the phrase which best reflects her work: the constantly rekindled desire to exist. The dizzying game of time, of traces left behind, of the ephemeral, the constant questioning of our mode of existence, inscribed on the walls of our cities.
A leading figure on the French stencilist movement, an artist who rose from street theatre, Miss.Tic is above all a poetess. Hers was a veritable literary, societal and philosophic project, expressed in spray paint in the heart of urban settings. During forty years of constant expression, she unceasingly hammered home the same ideas - not ideals - just 'high ideas' as she wrote - through a triptych which has remained identifiable despite perpetual change: aphorism, figure, signature.

Though Miss.Tic, who passed away in May 2022, is one of the pioneers of French street art, that is far from her only dimension. The artist expresses her rage, her desires, her humour, her urgency to exist through protean practices, indoors and out, in the city then in galleries, on walls, canvases, paper, silk, and sheet metal. Throughout, the street remained her preferred mode of expression, her preferred venue for exhibition and the education of her audience, where access was immediate - both for her and for those viewing her art.

Intimate and eminently political, her work insufflates an air of rebellion. Under an appearance of lightness, sometimes provocative, Miss.Tic raises serious, deep questions. She forces viewers to doubt, pushes them to elevation, imagination and desire. She places language at the heart of her work. The power of words in a world that is inegalitarian and violent, that she dreams of changing. For Miss.Tic, poetry is both a tool for struggle and a way of reading the city, and existence itself. In the heart of public space - and of the history of art – dominated by men, Miss.Tic puts the body into play: first of all the artist's body, in action in the city, then the bodies she portrays, bodies of women for the most part, standardized bodies hijacked from the pages of women's magazines or advertising whose formal and rhetorical codes she takes over for herself.
For decades, in a leap from the illicit to the licit, the artist raised the question of the center (the street, people, the city as open-air museum) and of the marginal (the cream of the crop of contemporary art, its galleries with their white neon lights and indecent prices). An artist of the people, she embodies a type of Parisian anti-snobbery and has earned, at the price of untiring effort, a central position in the history of art that is in the process of being written. Uninhibited, inclusive and audacious, a position to which this exhibition intends to contribute.
What could be more eloquent than a première monograph and posthumous exhibition at the Palace of the Popes, in Avignon, for the artist who unceasingly celebrated the poetic power of place, who pleaded for the people as opposed to the elite, who dared transgress established order? A final, last provocation, perhaps, one last nose-thumbing at history and at power, in a place of political, religious and military power that has evolved into a popular symbol of culture, art and celebration.

Camille Lévy-Sarfati
January 2024

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