Secondary Market
C215
French, born 1973
C215 is the stencil name of Christian Guémy, a French artist born in 1973 who paints close-up portraits of people the city overlooks. Working on letter boxes, doors and electrical cabinets as readily as on canvas, he has carried street stencil art into the Panthéon and national museums.
Biography
C215 is the working name of Christian Guémy, born in 1973 in Bondy, on the eastern edge of Paris, and based in Ivry-sur-Seine. A graffiti writer before he became a stencil artist, he cut his first stencils in 2006 and soon became known for portraits seen at very close range: homeless people, refugees, children and the elderly, built from layered sprays of colour that break into near-abstraction when you step closer.
The street as a support
Much of C215’s work starts with an object that already belongs to the street. Post boxes, electrical cabinets, doors and shutters become supports, so that each portrait stays tied to the place where it was made. In 2014 the post boxes he painted in Valletta were removed by the Maltese postal service within days, setting off a public debate; in 2015 he painted letter boxes in Rabat while taking part in Main Street at the Musée Mohammed VI d’art moderne et contemporain. Works on metal doors and wooden planks carry the same idea into the studio.
From a London tunnel to the Panthéon
In 2008 C215 was among the artists invited to the Cans Festival in London’s Leake Street tunnel. Over the following decade his path led into institutions rarely open to street art: E=MC215 at the Musée des Arts et Métiers (2015), Radium215 at the Musée Curie (2016), Illustres !, a cycle of 28 portraits inside and around the Panthéon (2018), and La Légende des Cieux at the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace (2019). Since 2022 he has painted portraits in Ukraine, shown in 2023 at the Assemblée nationale in Paris and at the War Museum in Kyiv.
Recognition
Stamps designed for La Poste, including the 2016 issue marking the centenary of Léo Ferré, have carried his portraits far beyond the wall. He was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2019 and Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite in 2023.
Selected exhibitions
- 2014 — Urban Legends, MACRO, Rome (group)
- 2014 — POW! WOW!, Honolulu Museum of Art (group)
- 2016 — Panopticon, Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, Saint Petersburg
- 2016 — Artistes à la Une, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (group)
- 2018 — 100 ans après, Musée de la Légion d’honneur, Paris
- 2022 — Entre ombre et lumière, Musée de l’Ordre de la Libération, Paris