Ernest Pignon-Ernest was born in Nice in 1942. Since 1966 he has made the street both the setting and the subject of his ephemeral works af art, which echo and underscore the historical and current events occurring there.
«Places are my essential materials. I try to understand, to grasp everything that can be seen there – space, light, colours – and at the same time everything that cannot or can no longer be seen: history, buried memories. This is what I use to elaborate my images, wich are thus born out of the places where I set them. (…) The aim of this insertion is both to make the place into a ‘visual space‘ and to work on its memories, to reveal, disrupt and heighten its symbolism. (…) I do not make works in a given situation, I try to make works with situations.»