Author: Alice

Pascal and 3 other characters living in the streets of Paris

1- PASCAL (black and white drawings with ink and graphite on tracing paper)

Pascal is a homeless man in Paris who was spending his days on a bench and sleeping in a telephone booth.

When I met him the first time in April 2007, he was quietly reading on a a bench (his bench ) with a broken arm… I wanted to have a chatt with him but he said he was reading, I could not come just like that !

I came a few hours later and could sit next to him… We had a 2 hours conversation talking about life, hopes and disappointments.

Sometimes we kept silent,  looking at a lady sparrow who kept on coming close to him. he wanted to think she was his friend and tried to guess where her nest was.

He was very clear about his situation and his issue and mentioned with some humor he was suffuring from “abandonite aigue” or “acute abandonis”.

he allowed me to take some pictures of him. I came back in October the same year… and he was still on the same bench with the same broken arm. He was drinking beer and I was stroken by the change of his face which seem to be swollen and puffy.

Our conversation was not very coerent, he was probably drunk and I am not sure he recognised me. I got very upset by the thought of the coming winter. I never was courageous enough to visit this bench again.

I made this drawing in august 2009.

2- AUREL, JEAN-CLAUDE et SOFIANE

The same year I met AUREL, a very difformed man from Romenia who sang for me “Besa me mucho”, JEAN-CLAUDE who claimed he is the man who wore the costume of Casimir (!) and SOFIANE whith her strong facial toc on her damaged but beautiful face.

It is important to say they all agreed on me taking and showing those pictures through my artwork.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Monster and I

Exhibition at the Duchamp Gallery from 14.09.2011 to 15.10.2011

 

The project “My Monster and I” was set up with the CLIS, a group of twelve students at Jean Prevost School and in close collaboration with Hermine, their teacher.

In this project, Alice has chosen to work on the fears that haunt us from childhood. Fears transmitted by our parents, cultural fears , ancestral fears (fear of the wolf, for example, fear of being eaten), as well as private, secret fears related to our human nature (fear of being abandoned, fear of death, etc.)..

Initially and for two weeks, Alice worked with the CLIS through the idea that a monster would secretly share each child’s bedroom. Every child thus invented, designed and captured his monster on a card “Science and Dreams” which includes a detailed description of the main characteristics of the creature, it’s lifestyle and one scene in it’s life (such as a children hunt, a scene of joy, or a scene of feast, etc.).

In a second step, Alice storyboarded and “stylized” the creatures and built models, in an attempts to capture the poetic universes, sometimes funny or frightening, of these children of today. The stories of monsters that children have told the artist serve as the soundtrack of  “My Monster and I”.

Extract translated from the Journal d’Exposition.