I had been trying to meet Jodibona for two years. I finally found him at Le Carreau du Temple, surrounded by his paintings, completely relaxed, ready to talk.

The Fair

The Urban Art Fair at Le Carreau du Temple brings together the world’s top street art galleries in one space for several days each year. It is not a free event and it is not underground — but it is where you can see the full range of what street art has become as a market and as a medium.

The Pieces That Stopped Me

A €10,000 installation by Osmo depicting a deformed Mickey Mouse trapped behind a glowing phone screen — a critique of smartphone addiction that is impossible to look away from. The artist explained in French that he wanted the discomfort to be visceral.

A Singaporean artist had woven the soundwaves of 60 different people speaking in various Singaporean languages and dialects into silk canvases. The visual patterns were the compressed audio of human voices. I had never seen anything like it.

Then there was the piece made of red and blue lines that looked like chaos — until you looked through a colored lens. Red lens: skeletons. Blue lens: something completely different. One artwork, three realities.

Interview: Jodibona

Jodibona is French, known for vibrant pop-culture portraits of musical legends. He was a rock musician before he was an artist. When I asked about his controversial Michael Jackson mural, he was direct: he painted MJ because he loves the music. The controversy does not change the art.

RC Hagans, an artist from Montgomery, Alabama, told me that despite New York’s famous graffiti history, the delicate, silly, and unexpected style of Parisian street art is his favorite in the world.

That made me proud.