Located in one of France’s youngest and poorest regions, the city of Roubaix also is called home by a mix of immigrant populations from the global south who integrated into a vastly different culture than the one from which they came. Street Artist YZ has made women from these cultures the center stage of her large wheat-pasted portraits for about a decade, and we have published her campaigns of solid pillars of their communities several times.

In recognition of her participation in the women-centered exhibition URBAIN.ES here, curated by Magda Danysz, YZ says she conducted interviews of her subjects from Kabul, Vietnam, Tunisia, Cameron, and the Ivory Coast before creating their large-scale portraits. She says she considers her work as that of a documentarian. She says it’s a complex mix of conforming to the new culture and desiring to honor the traditions and habits of the old one. What has she learned, aside from the immigrant stereotypes of Roubaix that outsiders sometimes have about them?
“This is of particular importance when questioning identity issues in a country where the insistence on integration often prioritizes the cultural ‘smoothing’ over cultural identity,” she says.

Here are a few selections from YZ’s installations from her ongoing project “Empress,” which “explores the cultural diversity of different communities throughout the world, questioning ideas of consumerism and conformity.”
Click HERE to read our previous article about this exhibition.



YZ and Her ‘Amazone’ Warrior Women On Senegalese Walls – Harrington and Rojo on Huffington Post
YZ Yseult “Empress” Brings More Strong Female Images to the Street
URBAIN.ES
Exposition collective sous le commissariat de Magda Danysz
Group Show curated by Magda Danysz
Du 31 mars au 24 Juillet 2022
From March 31st to July 24th, 2022
Click HERE for more information and a complete preview of the artworks.
La Condition Publique, Roubaix, France
More about Roubaix: The Banlieue Project
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
A year after its close, we open the book on American street artist MOMO’s new book chronicling the exhibition “Parting Line.” Writing about and covering his work for 15 years or so, we’re always plea...
“Nature, colors, spirituality, self-knowledge, beauty and the power of black women and ancestral matrix cultures,” says Criola about the things that inspire her. The Brazilian muralist is in dow...
Today we celebrate the life of and honor the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. on this very cold winters' day in New York. Among his many writings and speeches are the ones that ultimately ide...
AL: "Just spent 12 days in prison in Tokyo" BSA: Fuck! Was the food as good as the art? AL: Nope. The exhibition went great. The street stuff not so great. The food was terrible and was served ...
“You’re not taking pictures of me right? I’ll kill ya. I got a coffin upstairs. You’d look perfect in that coffin. I know that.” So begins our delightful first time interview with the elusive Brooklyn...