Original artwork description:

This painting was started in 2013 and only finished nearly ten years later. It depicts a street in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris’ northwestern corner, known for its graffiti and its mix of contemporary urban global diaspora. Recent migrants are numerous in this neighborhood, which before the days of urban renewal and pollution control, received all the fumes and pollutants from the city as the direction of the wind usually sent everything up towards the northwest.

“Fugitives” by definition have left something behind, have runaway or departed from a past, and more often than not, they seek anonymity and new beginnings. Some immigrants have legal papers but many are “sans papiers” and fugitives not only from their homeland but also from the laws and police of the land in which they are currently living. It is a life of contingencies and of double jeopardy; one where identity can be as fleeting as a graffiti tag on a wall.

Materials used:

Oil on linen

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