The Art Of Alison Bignon

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Alison Bignon

Loose Notes of Sorrow

Title : 15
Dry point, rotring, water color
30 / 40 cm
2016

Title : Ernesto
Etchings, dry point, rotring, thread
30 / 40 cm
2015

Alison Bignon (b.1983, Paris).

I am 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.