Tell us a little about your artistic background and how you go into street art.
I haven’t had a formal artistic education, but my natural mother drew and left me her materials after she died at the age of 18. My grandmother drove me to reuse her materials and I would draw every Sunday at her place. This was when I was six, and I also used to draw a lot at school for fun – things like comics for the school journal and caricatures of kids and teachers. When I was fourteen, my uncle commissioned me to write Midnight Dreams in the NYC graffiti writers’ style, which was also around the time I first tried using spraypaint.
I’ve got a master’s degree in art history from the Sorbonne, about Franz Marc and Romanticism, and another master’s degree from CNRS, about XVIIth century religious theory of architecture and painting, but I’ve never been to art school, I’ve never taught or studied fine art.
Where and when did you put up your first street piece and how did your style develop?
It was of a colourful portrait of Ava, the mother of my daughter, Nina, in 2006, which I’d already made, without a computer.
Your friends and family are featured in many of your pieces. How do you go about selecting your subjects? Are they all people you know and what is the process to get your work onto the street?
This is a very natural process – I don’t believe that much in ‘Art’ with a capital ‘A’, and when I think about my future, I want to remember my feelings and the people I met, so most of my recent works are based on pictures I took during my trips, pictures from my life, representing people that I loved. I am also working with friends like Jeremy Gibbs and Jon Cartwright. I think the most important thing in life is friendship.
How do you choose which walls to paint on? Do you prefer certain contexts over others?
It depends on the stencils I‘ve been preparing. I used to prepare my stencils and my colours according to the places I visit. After that I try to interact and make my works blend as much as possible into the environment.
Tell us about some of the reactions that people have had to your work on the street.
Most of them are nice, but it does occasionally happen that someone will have a stupid reaction. I remember once in Marseille a very bad feeling: a family of Arabic people began abusing the friend with whom I was painting because she was Italian. This happens, but rarely. Most of the time people come and check what I’m doing and are surprised, and then compare it to writing and love it.
You live in Vitry-sur-Seine in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, which is covered by your work and the work of several other well-known street artists including Roa, Jimmy C, Nunca and Pixel Pancho. What has been your role in making Vitry a street art ‘destination’?
I don’t know, it has also been very natural, just inviting friends of mine to paint in my area, with neighbours and city institutions providing walls. No sponsor, no project, no flyer – just artists working, relaxed in the streets. This is the good side of not being in Paris, intra-muros.
Having travelled extensively presenting your art in cities around the world, where did you have the best and worst experiences?
It has been great to paint all over the world and I’ve had mainly good experiences, and just a few negative ones. I especially like to go painting in places that are not yet familiar with street art.
Photo: C215
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced while putting up a piece?
I think it was great to paint a copy of Caravaggio’s Medusa in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, during the anniversary of the Carabinieri: hundreds of cops busy with a ceremony. I did it, as I did with many other stupidly risky paintings in the last few years.
How does the street art scene in Paris and the surrounding arrondissements compare to that in the other cities?
Paris gave birth to street art, as New York gave birth to graffiti, and I guess in future Paris will be involved in this movement in a big way, like no other city in the world.
Where in else in the world would you like to put up pieces?
I want to go to South Africa quite soon as well as a few other exotic destinations.
Tell us about your latest exhibition that is taking place in the XVIIth century Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière church in Paris,“Prophètes”.
Basically I’ve been transferring portraits of kids into religious icons, and placing them in a church, as ecumenical symbols.
My art is anthropocentric and I believe every person is a cosmos, with a certain divinity. I want to give this through my art as a symbol of a new iconology. Instead of old classical religious icons, I selected the faces of kids as an ecumenical symbol of faith and hope.
Stained glass is a new medium to me and follows from, firstly, painting white on dark surfaces, and then, my exploration of colour. This is the first time I’ve tried exploring light as a medium; although, the stencil allows light to pass through it.
Light is also linked to religion, however, for the people who would have a certain inhibition to visit an exhibition taking place in a Christian church, they can still visit the light box which will be displayed outside the church, on the wall of the City Hall of the 13th arrondissement of Paris, creating a “universal” space, which acts in a different way from the religious space of the church. Maybe for me, as a street artist, it is even more important to see the reception of this one piece, than the rest of the light boxes that will be inside the church. Every night, along with the city lights, the light box will be turned on.
You have said that the exhibition is “a call for religious tolerance and ecumenism”, and many of your street pieces carry the slogan, “MAKE ART NOT WAR”. What role should politics play in urban art?
Painting in the street is already a political act, because it helps to fight against standardization. You can have a more specific message, but for me “Making Art” in the streets is already something
What do you think is the importance of street art?
Street art is as important now as was Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1950′s. So, it’s just the beginning, and it will change the world.
What are your plans for 2012?
Being happy, travelling as much as I can with my daughter and to enjoy life.
Photo: copyright Agnes Gautier
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C215’s latest exhibition “Prophètes”, organised by Galerie Itinerrance, opens on 22nd March 2012 at 6pm at the XVIIth Century consecrated Parisian church Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière:
Chapelle Saint-Louis, Pitié-Salpêtrière
47 Boulevard de l’Hopital, 75013
