The art of portraiture by Twotma
A conversation with poster artist aimée pédezert aka twotma
Photos by Nina Ducleux
Aimée Pédezert, aka Twotma, is a French street artist. Although she first made a name for herself on the streets of Lisbon, she is now based in Paris. Her style, with its free lines and the use of her own words, comes from an impulsive and deceptively approximate way of drawing. Always using Indian ink, she spreads her poetry via collages on walls. She draws her inspiration from everyday life, distilling her commitment through illustrations that are at once romantic, sarcastic and utopian.
From this first collaboration with the artist, we wanted to go further than clothes, and explore with her her talents as a poster artist. After covering the walls of our Parisian boutique/office with her 70s-inspired portraits, we invited her to reinterpret slogans from the same era, to be displayed on the walls of Nantes. It was also an opportunity to talk about her work as an artist.
What is your artistic background?
I've always painted - there's not a photograph of my childhood where I don't have a brush or pencil in my hand. Painting, creating, has always been the prism through which I viewed my relationship with things, people and time. And yet, until very late in life, it seemed inconceivable to me to take my passion seriously, to look my pleasure in the face and try to make a living of it.
I chose to study to work with artists, thinking: if I don't take the plunge and become an artist myself, at least I'll gravitate towards them, these free thinkers/makers who offer us an escape from reality - and I'll make sure that their visions are seen, recognised and celebrated. I soon realised that this wasn't going to be enough, and that my need to express something personal, in the material, with my hands, was becoming stronger and more burning, and that it had to be expressed somehow.
In 2016 I left my job as a gallery owner in Bordeaux, and with no particular objective in mind, I took a single ticket to Lisbon. I had to leave the city where I grew up, my family and my circle of friends, I had to go somewhere else, not necessarily far away, but just far enough to relax, take a deep breath and refocus. And that's what happened.
What's your connection with portraiture?
Lisbon and the solitude I finally found drove me mad with joy and creativity. So I set up a ritual: every morning - I'm an early riser - I'd go to the café. As soon as it opened at 6.30am, I was settled in. I'd bring my pad of paper, brush and inkwell, and I'd draw the scenes of life I saw unfolding before my eyes. I was infinitely curious about the gestures, expressions and sounds of the Portuguese culture I was discovering. I understood nothing of the language, so everything became visual, sonorous, olfactory and sensual - so naturally and happily I put my noisy brain to one side and began to paint, frantically, in the present tense, all this unknown vitality that I was admiring.
It was then that, being a rather reserved person by nature, I started inviting the people in the café to sit opposite me for a portrait. It was touching, most of them combed their hair, stood up straight and posed, looking as beautiful as if they were going to be photographed. In two minutes they would tell me an anecdote from their lives, about the neighbourhood, about their day. It was a brief moment that, strangely enough, placed them and me in a kind of complicity that I experienced as extraordinary, at the very heart of the most ordinary context.
It was through portraiture, and therefore through other people, that I began to express myself.
I fell in love with portraiture: more than just drawing, trying to capture the essence of a face became trying to understand, each time, a universe, a story, a complexity. Painting faces meant reaching out to others, this time while being fully myself, that is to say, presenting myself for the first time, and in a way that accepted me, as the dreamer, the odd one out, the outsider that I had always been. It was through portraits, and therefore through others, that I began to express myself.
How did you get the idea to stick your work in the street?
After months of this ritual, and a few litres of coffee, I found myself with mountains of portraits, each on an A4 sheet of white paper, in black ink, invading the tiny room I was renting. I thought they were great, side by side, with their different expressions, they were literally alive, and I wanted to find a space for them to express the life that emanated from them...
...Well, I'll tell you the anecdote...
Un type est venu visiter l'appartement, j'avais prévu de déménager. Lors de la visite, je l'observais, je me disais, mince, ces traits-là sont différents, j'aimerais vraiment le dessiner - mais en deux secondes il était déjà reparti, et je me retrouvais seule face à ma feuille de papier. Je me suis donc mise à le croquer de mémoire, vite, immédiatement, avant de l'oublier.
A guy came to look at the flat, as I was planning to move. During the visit, I was looking at him, thinking, gosh, those lines are different, I'd really like to draw him - but in two seconds he'd gone again, and I was left alone with my sheet of paper. So I started sketching it from memory, quickly, immediately, before I forgot about it.
That same evening I met up with a friend in a jazz bar I liked a lot, near the Tagus, the ‘café Tati’. ‘All you have to do is stick your drawings in the street and see if you find your handsome stranger’, he said, laughing. I took his advice literally: ‘Have you seen this man?’ I added to his portrait, ‘Have you seen this woman?’, and to all the others - and at night I went out and pasted, like a game, a survey, ‘WANTED’, have you seen these people drawn here?
There was no stopping me: every morning I drew and every night I pasted.
The current collection, Fire & Joy, is very much based on the idea of renewal and counter-culture. A need for human communion, freedom and openness. What does that mean to you?
The power of imagination, and the celebration of singularities, which inevitably lead to the new, the original, the strange, the incomprehensible, the offbeat. For me, counterculture is above all the sincere expression of these singularities. I also believe that the imagination is a clever little thing, and that it will always find a way to escape fashions, algorithms and paths that are a little too wise and too well-trodden. Artists work day and night to redefine and reinvent what we call freedom!
Artists are working day and night to redefine and reinvent what we call freedom!
