Vanessa Alice, known as Miss Van, is a French graffiti and street artist born in Toulouse in 1973. She is significant for bringing a female perspective to graffiti, a field long dominated by men, and for taking her work from the street into galleries across several countries.
She began painting in public at the age of 18, in 1991. At first she depicted herself in various ways as her signature, and she painted over pieces already made by men, a deliberately provocative gesture. Over the years, alongside fellow feminist artists such as Mademoiselle Kat, she started signing her works with her name. Her central characters, which she calls Poupées (dolls), blend women and girls, with slanted eyes and a mix of fragility and sensuality expressed through voluptuous forms and varied emotions. Her influences include free figuration, Japanese artists and the pin-ups of the 1950s, and she has named Mark Ryden and Junko Mizuno as artists who shaped her most, along with Vaughn Bodé's drawings published in the 1970s.
Over time her work moved toward the gallery while remaining connected to the street. She has exhibited in cities including Shanghai, London, Berlin, Paris and Vienna. In 2016 she held her first institutional show, "For The Wind in My Hair", at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, featuring 39 canvas paintings. She lives in Barcelona and has published several books with the publisher Drago.
Her work has sparked debate. Some feminists have criticised the way she portrays women in her graffiti, while other critics see her figures as a rejection of male dominance in art and a celebration of the female body. She is regarded as one of the best-known female graffiti and street artists in the world, in a genre with few prominent women.