ERNEST PIGNON-ERNEST was born in 1942 in Nice and is considered one of the pioneers of contemporary urban art in France.

Since the 1960s, he has been using public spaces with drawn images, often life-size, which he pastes on the walls of cities steeped in history. His work, fundamentally committed, is part of an approach that is both artistic and political. He questions the memory of places and brings forth, from their silence, human presences – victims, resistance fighters, poets, migrants. His precise, visceral lines in charcoal or pastel capture the tension of bodies confronted with disappearance, exile, and injustice.

Interview with André Velter.
“…initially, there is a place, a living space, that I want to work with. I try to understand it, to grasp everything that is visible there: the space, the light, the colors… and, in the same movement, what is unseen, what is no longer visible: the history, the buried memories, the symbolic weight… Into this real place, thus grasped in its complexity, I inscribe an element of fiction, an image (most often of a life-size body).
This insertion aims both to transform the place into a malleable space and to work with its memory, to reveal, disrupt, and heighten its symbolism…”

He has created numerous installations in France and abroad (Naples, Algiers, Soweto, Ramallah), and collaborated with many writers, from Jean Genet to Patrick Chamoiseau.

In *If the North Wind Were to Open the Door*, he unfolds, throughout the book, a discreet and poignant work, deeply resonating with the poet's voice. Read the press kit