Ella & Pitr are from the the French town of Saint-Étienne. When this duo met, Pitr, serious and of dour demeanor, unrepentant tagger and graffiti artist, had been clandestinely hitting the city walls for close to a decade, and wondering where to take things next. One dark and stormy autumnal night, this solitary individual would pack his rucksack with cans and markers, alone, one last time.
On that very same night, Ella, a bright and energetic young artist looking for ways to engage a larger audience with her character-driven works, had taken to the streets with bucket and paste and an armful of rolled-up paste-ups. Ella & Pitr were, of course, aware of each other’s work, Saint-Étienne being a relatively small town, but they had yet to meet. That evening, as Pitr was just finishing a mid-sized throw-up with a cheeky ultra-wide tag down an unlit alley, a dog started to bark wildly. Quickly packing his rucksack, pulling his hood over his baseball cap, he quickly moved down the street with a well practiced head-down march. Approaching the corner, he broke into a jog.