Miss Van, also known as Vanessa Alice, is a graffiti and street artist. Miss Van started painting on the street of Toulouse alongside Mademoiselle Kat at the age of 18. Today, she is now internationally known as a street and fine artist. Primarily, her work is marked by the use of unique characters, called poupées, or dolls. Miss Van's work has appeared on streets internationally, although she also exhibits canvases in galleries across France, Europe and the United States. Today, her work is characterized by both street art and fine art, blurring the lines between both worlds. Miss Van currently resides in Barcelona and has written and published several books with the publishing houseDrago and coordinated several art shows across Europe. She remains one of the most famous female street and graffiti artists in the world, recognized as one of the top figures in early 21st-century street art canon.
Artwork
In her artwork, Miss Van typically depicts sloe-eyed women, covering a varied array of female forms and expressing many different emotions. Common themes in her work include eroticism, sexuality, desire and innocence which are represented by animal masks, pastel colors, and revealing clothing. Miss Van's work illustrates a cartoonish, dream-like world of female sexuality. Over time the stylization of the women has changed, reflecting Miss Van's artistic and personal evolution as she has grown and matured. This change is paralleled in Miss Van's increased preference for the gallery over the street. In the gallery, Miss Van embraces enclosed and intimate gallery space as part of the artistic experience. Between 2008 and 2016, Miss Van exhibited artwork in private galleries in Shanghai, London, Rome, Berlin, Paris and Vienna. In North America, she has held shows in Detroit, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Montreal, Chicago and New York. Notable shows include, Still a Little Magic at Upper Playground, San Francisco in 2008; Cachetes Colorados at Upper Playground, Mexico City in 2010; and A Moment in Time at Saatchi Gallery, London in 2016. The same year, Miss Van also showed at the Atmossphere Biennale in Moscow, where she exhibited a woven wool rug based on an original painting.
Critical reception
Thematically, her work has provoked a negative reaction from some feminists due to the portrayal of women in her graffiti. Although she receives this backlash, her reasoning for her painting is more personal. "Painting on walls was a way to show that I was boycotting the conventional art world". Despite negative critique of her work, some critics perceive her portrayal of sexuality and feminity as a powerful rejection of male supremacy and male-dominated art. Her work is also appreciated for centering women and increasing the representation of women in street art. Furthermore, the depiction of a full-figured female form in Miss Van's work is representative of body positive politics. Miss Van is regarded as one of the most famous female graffiti and street artists in the world, a genre that is generally considered as having few female artists. In 2013, Miss Van painted a street art piece with collaborators depicting what is commonly referred to as "Blackface." She faced a string of criticism on her personal instagram account as a white European woman appropriating the culture of Black Americans. Despite personal pleas of people of color, the artist chose to delete and censor their posts, causing even more of a disruption. In 2016, Miss Van held her first institutional art show at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in Spain, titled "For The Wind in My Hair." The show featured 39 original paintings on canvas. Artnet News calls the show as "interesting discourse between the worlds of fine art and street art." Miss Van also displays how meaning changes between these two artistic sites, the street and the gallery.
2014 – , StolenSpace Gallery, London – Solo Show 2014 – , StolenSpace Gallery, London – Group Show 2014 – , Johnathan LeVine Projects – Group Show 2014 – – Fair 2015 – , StolenSpace Gallery, London – Group Show 2015 – , Isabelle Croxatto Galleria, Santiago – Group Show 2015 – , StolenSpace Gallery, Berlin – Group Show 2015 – – Fair 2016 – , Isabel Croxatto Galería, Santiago – Group Show 2016 – , Şişli – Fair 2017 – , Victor Lope Arte Contemporaneo, Barcelona – Solo Show 2017 – , Jonathan LeVine Projects, Jersey City – Group Show 2017 – – Fair
