Monique Gies

An ostrakon is a shard of clay from ancient Greece. It was used to vote for the exile of a person for reasons of politics, morality or treason. Writings and drawings can be found engraved on this ritual object of exclusion. The artist Monique Gies turns her work into an act of ostracism.

For the first time, Monique Gies’ paintings and portraits are on show at the Galerie Gaillard in Paris. The initiative for this event came from her daughter, who discovered around a hundred of the artist’s works after her death.

In 1977, at the age of forty-three, the artist abruptly broke away from a comfortable family life and shut herself up in a maid’s room in Paris. This seclusion, chosen to paint, warned her of a psychiatric institution. Gies sensed the worst to come. M.G. violently calls into question not only her family life, but also a traumatic event that has been suppressed for too long.