Alison Bignon (b.1983, Paris).
i m a classically-trained actress, theatre director and visual artist known for my method of making abstract portraits depicting the real-life stories of my sitters.
Following an initial interview, a dialogue between me and subject that can last several weeks, i will spend days in my studio translating my subject’s emotions into a graphic vocabulary i created, finely-details works on paper. A part of these works are rooted in the technical, traditional method of engraving (dry point, burin,etchings, embossing) , then hand - finished with watercolor, pencil and pen-and-ink details (which is making all the pieces unique).
Works on paper are often accompanied by a video piece (or a poetry) in which i take on the persona of the subject and perform a monologue i wrote, based on their story.
The aim of this approach is to archive individual stories and to give them an important and "nurturing" place in the great history.
I use all mediums without restrictions (video, engraving, drawing, painting, writing ...) if necessary in the construction of the « loose notes of sorrow » of the subject.
The material and myself, putting us at the service of the story told, In order to feed an emotional database, a kind of anthropological work, requiring a mnemonic approach.
For me, all these « loose notes of sorrow » are above all a return to the other, the empathetic art, necessary in a society extinguishing all pure emotion.
CV
Visual Artist ( b. 1983 in Paris )
Represented by Amelie Maison D'art Gallery (Paris) and Miaja Art Collection Gallery (Singapore)
Education
Beaux Arts de Versailles ( engraving, drawing, sculpture, video ), graduated with top honors
( With a special commendation from the jury )
Ecole nationale de Chaillot ( actoring, directing )
Solo show
A road, Zeuxis Art room, London, curated by Amélie Du Chalard
( 2 june - 24 july 2016 )
Murmure d’une feuille, Mairie du 1er, Paris, curated by Thomas Brissault
( 17-27 dec 2015 )
Fragments II, Alliance Française, Los Angeles, curated by Virginie d’Haudrechy
( 17 sept - 17 nov 2015 )
Fragments, De Ré Gallery, Los Angeles, curated by Steph Sebbag
( 16 dec 2014- 21 jan 2015 )
Group show
Rising Sun setting at Miaja Gallery, Singapore,
( oct 2018 )
Affordable Art Fair Singapore, with Miaja Gallery
( 18 - 22 nov 2018 )
Affordable Art Fair HONG KONG, with Miaja Gallery
( 18 - 22 may 2018 )
#SHE, virtual gallery across all major billboards . Curated by Avenir Art, Vanessa Power, London
( 10 nov - 27 dec 2017 )
Beyond borders, Blain Southern gallery, London, curated by NEXTgen
( 16 - 21 may 2016 )
SALO, galerie 24 Beaubourg, Paris, curated by Laurent Quenehen
( 6 - 10 ap 2016 )
Particule de fin, galerie de la Voûte, Paris, duo show with Camille Moravia
( 17 - 29 mar 2016 )
Fragments of, Castle Gibson, London, curated by MTArt
( 14 - 21 oct 2015 )
Space, contexts, habitats, Palazzo Biscari, Sicily, curated by Pietro Scammacca
( 30 june - 3 july 2015 )
Blue Nudes, De Ré Gallery, Los Angeles, curated by Linda Dzhema
( 28 may - 27 june 2015 )
Nothing perishes, Soho Revue Gallery, London, curated by Will Pelham
( 14 april - 16 may 2015 )
Korea namboo international contemporary fine art festival, South korea
( nov 2014 )
Institution
Group show video, Pique nique video, Contemporary Art Center APONIA, Villiers sur Marne, curated by Laurent Quenehen ( Juin 2016 )
Vit et travaille à Clichy vol 1, Contemporary Art Center Le Pavillon Vendôme, Clichy, curated by Charline Guibert ( 11 dec 2015 - 4 jan 2016 )
Video / installation
Selection Brigade des Images Video Zhora.F, Screening at the Shakirail,
Curation Laurent Querehen
( 17 Oct 2017 )
Festival Instants Numériques et Poétiques, Video Mathieu.F,
at La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseilles, Curator Marc Mercier
( 11 Nov 2017 )
Selection Brigade des Images Video Zhora.F, Screening at the Cinema of Villiers-sur-Marne,
Curation Laurent Querehen
( 12 Nov 2017 )
Un hôte, Egde of Arabia Gallery, London, collaboration with C. Mahboubian, writing and acting
( august 2015 )
Maud, selected by la brigade des images, screening in Russia, France, Georgia,
curated by Laurent Quenehen
( all 2014 )
Maud, La Fabulerie, Marseilles, screening during love screen pop corn, curated by Lydie Marchi
( mar 2014 )
Autour de ma peau, La Friche Belle de mai, Marseilles,
Festival international de la création vidéo et de la poésie électronique, curated by Marc Mercier
( 2012 )
Residencies
Hélène de Senneville Gallery, Mauritius
(July to august 2018)
Hélène de Senneville Gallery, Mauritius
(July to august 2017)
la demeure, Roubaix, France
( may 2015 )
Art village of Jeongsu, South Korea
( june to september 2013 )
Curation
Curating a solo show, fossilized breaths, Galerie V.Evrard (Paris 18), Artist Christy Titus
(23-31 march 2017)
Curating the group show Landscapes, at gallery de la Voûte (Paris 12) during Paris Photo week
( 8 - 20 nov 2016 )
Solo show Murmur, Galerie Nivet-Carzon, Artist Cyrus Mahboubian
( 12 - 17 april 2016 )
Solo show Mulholland, galerie Nivet-Carzon, Artist Cyrus Mahboubian
( 9 - 16 nov 2015 )
Carte Blanche at Théâtre Rutebeuf, Clichy,
Artist : Camille Moravia, Axelle Remeaud, Victor Gingembre, ...
( 1 jan - 31 june 2015 )
Artist Portrait
by
Rajvee Vyas
For artist Alison Bignon, “Art is first and foremost an encounter.” Her work draws upon
exchanges with ordinary people, and it is in her apartment in Clichy, Paris that the artist
listens to and transcribes people’s life stories, creating them into art. These stories are
carefully stored in what the artist terms an “emotional data bank.” According to Alison, to
capture the inner movements of the soul, one must be a sensitive and empathetic listener and
have the subtle versatility of an artist in order to transcribe.
Combining her background and experience as a classically trained actor, director, and visual
artist, Alison transcribes and creates the stories of her sitters using a range of media including
videoed performance monologues, paintings, drawings and engravings. She describes this
process as being similar to the work of an anthropologist that archives their research.
Emotions form the central subject of Alison’s work, leaving one with an intricately detailed
and complex composition that combines disparate elements to form a coherent and harmonic
whole. Her paintings seep delicate strokes of colour – a spectrum of emotions, such as a
painful wound that is difficult to heal and may scar over time. These markings of time -
between past and present - are sewn together by the artist’s signature use of red thread, which
acts as a subtle link between these intersections.
It is in these moments and exchanges with her sitters that Alison extracts the elusive, and
where she believes her art operates. She is sensitive to the vicissitudes of emotions, such as
the complex nature of pain and healing, and the need for life stories to continue to be retold.
This can be seen in her paintings on the death victims of police violence in the United States.
The artist adapts and evolves her technique to pay tribute to their lives, by telling the stories
of those no longer able to speak. Chicago, October 20, 2014 strikes you with its harsh
brutality depicted through the artist’s use of drip paint in what resembles dried blood.
Paintings like this one can be contemplated in her studio open to the public. Her more recent
work curated by Vanessa Power was exhibited in Avenir Art’s, “She” exhibition, displayed
across major billboards in London. Upcoming work by the artist will soon feature in Hong
Kong’s, Affordable Art Fair, where she will be represented by MIAJA Gallery, which she is
newly signed to. Alison believes that this new opportunity will enable “these little stories to
become part of a bigger story,” and for “it to be another way for the emotions of a person to
live again, so that the past is going into the present, and be archived for the future.”