His death, which occurred in Paris following an illness, was announced by his family to AFP. On her social networks, the news is accompanied by a photo of the poet and visual artist in her studio.
Dated March 2022, the photo shows the artist, regularly exhibited in France and abroad since 1986, smiling behind her round glasses, with short gray hair.
The general public will surely remember the black hair – which she herself wore for a long time – of her heroines stencilled on the walls of the capital in particular, which paved the way for many artists.
“I had a lot of respect for his career”, underlines on Twitter Christian Guémy, alias C215, another figure of French street art
He salutes “one of the founders of stencil art”, who left “too soon”. “The walls of the 13th (arrondissement, editor’s note) will never be the same again,” he laments.
His 65-year-old colleague, Jef Aerosol, cried on Instagram for his contemporary, who “fought against the disease with so much courage”, evoking “so many moments shared since the beginning of the 80s”.
Born of a Tunisian immigrant father and a Norman mother, Radhia Novat, her real name, began printing her art in 1985 in the streets of Butte-Montmartre – where she grew up -, the Marais, Montorgueil and Butte-aux-Cailles, after a stay in California.
“I came from street theatre, I liked this idea of ​​art in the street”, explained in 2011 to AFP this woman with a dull complexion, who borrowed her pseudonym from the witch Miss Tick of “La bande à Scrooge”, created by Carl Barks.
– “Heart words” –
“I said to myself first: I am going to write poems. Then: You need images with the poems. I started with self-portraits, then I continued towards the other women”, added the one who accompanied her works. incisive legends like “I put on wall art to bombard words with hearts”, for his first portrait on a wall in the 14th arrondissement, or “man is a wolf for man and a fool for woman”.
“I use the contemporary woman a lot, the one we see in fashion, advertising. Sometimes it’s not very well understood, when you can be young and pretty and have things to say But it’s true that we are sold what we want with beautiful girls. So, I said to myself: I’m going to put women to sell them poetry, “continued this unrepentant smoker.
Its beginnings are marked by long years of hardship and trouble with the law, the tag or the stencil being considered as a deterioration of property. His arrest for this reason in 1997 earned him a fine.
After this episode, she negotiates the urban spaces where she wants to work, refusing to be taken for a delinquent.
Her art, ephemeral or lasting, attracted major brands in the 2000s, particularly in the fashion world, where she collaborated with Kenzo, for a limited edition t-shirt, or Louis Vuitton.
In 2007, she signed the poster for the film “La fille coupé en deux”, by Claude Chabrol, participated in the 2010 edition of the Petit Larousse by illustrating words from the French language and created a collection of stamps with the Post Office in occasion of women’s rights day in 2011.
Some of his works have been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Contemporary Art Fund of the City of Paris.
She will also be one of the artists exhibited in the fall at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, on the occasion of an exhibition retracing 40 years of urban art in the capital.
The date of his funeral, “which will be, according to his wishes, open to the public”, will be specified later, according to his official Facebook account.
