Ernest Pignon-Ernest: Je Est Un Autre

“Je Est Un Autre” a unique exhibition by Ernest Pignon-Ernest designed especially for the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia.

The notion of “the foreigner” has been an important element in Pignon-Ernest’s work since the 1960s. From Naples to Rome, Soweto to Haiti, Paris to Algiers – his artistic interventions on city walls spotlight and transform the tensions and dramas of the places he selects to express his vision.

His work has piqued the interest of major artists like Francis Bacon, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Barthélémy Toguo, and even French photographer and street artist JR. In France, Pignon-Ernest is the first to have appropriated city walls as canvases and to have mixed drawing and photography, thirty years before street art even began its ascent. Central to the display is the image of Pier Paolo Pasolini, carrying his own corpse like a pietà, as a stranger to himself.

Exclusive works, specifically created for the Biennale, celebrate two major figures of universal poetry driven by strongly emotional writing and unwavering commitment: Russian Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and Iranian Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967). These portraits are accompanied by those of Neruda, Rimbaud, Genet and Glissant among others.