His work has been exhibited in galleries in France and abroad – Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI
Aurélie CARABIN
Miss.Tic, whose provocative work began popping up in Paris’s Montmartre district in the mid-1980s and made her a pioneer of French street art, died on Sunday at the age of 66, it has been reported his family to AFP.
Radhia Novat grew up in the narrow streets in the shadow of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the daughter of a Tunisian father and a Norman mother in western France, where she began stenciling slogans sneaky and emancipatory.
Her family said she died of an unspecified illness.
Other French street artists paid tribute to his work.
On Twitter, street artist Christian Guemy, alias C215, hailed “one of the founders of stencil art”. The walls of the 13th arrondissement of Paris – where his images are commonplace – “will never be the same again”, he wrote.
Another colleague, “Jef Aerosol”, said he fought his last illness with courage, in a tribute posted on Instagram.
And the new French Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, hailed her “emblematic, resolutely feminist” work.
Miss.Tic’s work often included clever puns – almost always lost in translation – and a heroine with flowing dark hair who looked like the artist herself. The images have become fixtures on the walls of the capital.
“I had a background in street theater and I loved this idea of street art,” Miss.Tic said in a 2011 interview.
“At first I thought, ‘I’m going to write poems. And then, “we need images” with these poems. I started with self-portraits, then moved on to other women,” she said.
Miss.Tic also brought law enforcement attention to complaints of damage to public property, leading to an arrest in 1997.
But his works have been exhibited in galleries in France and abroad, some of which have been acquired by the Parisian modern art fund of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, according to his website.
And moviegoers will recognize his work on the poster for Claude Chabrol’s film “The Girl Cut in Two” (2007).
For a while, she was a favorite of fashion brands such as Kenzo and Louis Vuitton.
“Too often, we don’t understand that we can be young and beautiful and have things to say,” she told AFP in 2011.
“But it’s true that they sell us what they want with beautiful women. So I thought, I’m going to use these women to sell them poetry.
His funeral, the date of which has not yet been announced, will be open to the public, his family said.