« What I seek to express is not theoretical. It is born in the flesh, in the scar, in the silenced words and the swallowed rebellions. For several years, my own body has become the site of a series of ordeals that I have chosen not to endure, but to traverse. Two years of paralysis caused by rheumatoid arthritis. A double mastectomy. A generalized cancer. A stroke. Each time, my identity falters, my body unravels, but something greater rises: my creation.
My work is nourished by this tension. It’s a zone of friction between appearance and sensation, between the norm and the intimate, between how others see me and what I endure in silence. Through Softtwix, I do not represent femininity: I question it, twist it, deconstruct it to better reveal its fractures and its strength. I use my lived experience as a living laboratory: each operation, each pain, each forced transformation becomes poetic, visual, and photographic material.
I continue to create despite – or perhaps because of – these ordeals. They have not weakened me; they’ve given a unique density to my work. They have sharpened my gaze, grounded my images in a reality I cannot escape, allowing me to speak truthfully about vulnerability, the wounded body, the altered feminine. But also about resistance. About grace in the fall. About the strength we find when everything else collapses.
I have made my path into a language. I am still here. And as long as I am, I will keep translating this inner struggle into images, giving shape to what remains unseen, embodying my voice.«
THE STORY OF THE BLAZON
The Awakening: Birth of a Free Image A self-taught artist, she began her journey in photography after a pivotal period in the world of fashion and advertising. From the outset, she felt an instinctive resistance to presenting her images behind glass in black frames. Early on, she invented a technique that would become her signature: embedding silver gelatin prints into carved wooden plaques, shaped to the size of the image and covered with dozens of layers of varnish, hand-polished between coats, in the tradition of Chinese lacquer work. This artisanal process gave birth to her first exhibition, Autour du Monde, in 2001 on rue Quincampoix in Paris. There, she presented around sixty intimate and timeless images, praised for their softness, peace, and singular power of seduction.
“The seventy images making up her first ‘real’ exhibition look like nothing else. Portraits, flowers, fruits, cities, animals… Baryta paper prints, sepia-toned, embedded in wooden frames, coated with about fifty layers of varnish. A mad endeavor to which she’s devoted all her free time over the past five years. The result exudes a sense of timelessness, peace, and a strange seduction.” — Danièle Mazingarbe, Madame Figaro, 2001
Nocturnal Light – Sleepless Nights of a Mother In 2002
The birth of her daughter marked a turning point. She left the advertising world to devote herself fully to motherhood and creation. Days were for her child, nights for her art. She joined an artist collective housed in a former printworks in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, occupying a light-filled studio where she experimented with a less toxic technique suited to her new life. Working with large-format Polaroid film (809) and a 20×25 inch view camera, she transferred emulsions onto whitened solid wood. The result was fragile, translucent, poetic. This period gave rise to several key series: Court Métrages Photographiques, Nue, and Le Bestiaire — the latter still ongoing.
“Humans, animals, and landscapes seem imbued with the same empathetic gaze, the same tender urge to embrace everything and even more. The disquiet stems from this: from the uniform treatment ‘inflicted’ upon subjects so diverse by nature, unified only by a near-cosmic vision. From this singularly humane spectacle, the viewer walks away sated, soothed by the softness of these sepia-toned black and white images, these life prints tinged with the spiritual. And yet, the eye remains intrigued, still surprised. Probably for a long time to come.” — Sylvain Fanet, TGV Magazine, 2004
Shock and Silence
But in 2006, two major events upended her daily life: Polaroid ceased production, and she lost her Paris studio. With her family, she moved to the Bresse countryside, into a farmhouse to be renovated. Too late, she discovered that the chemical lab process was incompatible with a septic tank system. This sudden halt to her practice triggered a violent emotional shock. Within weeks, she developed severe rheumatoid arthritis, undiagnosed for nearly two years. Bedridden, her joints immobilized, she endured a long period of pain and exhaustion. It wasn’t until 2010, with intensive treatment, that she began to regain her footing.
Digital Rebirth – The Birth of Sonac
This recovery marked a rebirth. Unable to continue analog work, she transitioned fully to digital. She learned to use a computer, taught herself Photoshop, invested in new tools, and entered a new creative phase. From then on, she wanted to break away from traditional exhibition formats. She wanted to bring her work to the street. This impulse birthed SONAC and the Affichage Sauvage project. By pasting photographs of animals in public spaces, in subtle dialogue with walls and urban textures, she created powerful trompe-l’oeil works that surprise, question, and move. The animal, reintegrated into the city, becomes a mirror, a presence, a question. The act of pasting becomes a physical and poetic performance. She pastes by night, despite the pain, and photographs the scene at dawn – the only remaining trace of these ephemeral interventions.
“Around the corner, on a bricked-up air vent, caged by a metal grate, a panther with a penetrating gaze watches passersby. It’s been there for over a year. The hurried may never notice it, but the curious wonder: ‘Who would paste the portrait of a feline here?’ The culprit is named Sonac…”
— Philippe Romain, Le Figaro, 2011
Whispered Faces, Exposed Scars
Meanwhile, she endured the loss of her mother to cancer in 2011. In echo to this grief, a new identity emerged: SOFTTWIX, and with it, the E.Doll Project. This series interrogates the societal pressures placed upon women – the dependence on external gaze, the pursuit of approval. On walls, giant feminine faces, scarred and hypnotic, are reconstructed from multiple portraits, embodying the tension between beauty, pain, and resistance. Black and white becomes texture; the gaze, direct and cathartic. Again, public space becomes a resonant chamber.
“An artist of shadows who cultivates secrecy, Softtwix long brushed against the fashion and advertising world through her lens. In 2014, she launched the E.Doll project, plastering XXL portraits of scarred women with powerful stares, heightened by black and white contrast. At once beautiful and unreal, they reflect a society where women live, consciously or not, in dependence on the gaze of others… These heroines, composed from various portraits and enhanced with material, emit neither sadness nor aggression, but a paradoxical kind of serenity.”
— Emmanuelle Dreyfus, GraffitiART, 2019
Stitching Wounds on Walls
Her work gained scale and recognition, but in 2016, another blow arrived: breast cancer. She opted for a double mastectomy – touted as the only way to prevent recurrence – but endured a series of ten mutilating surgeries, leaving her with a hypotrophic pectoral muscle and 49 cm of scars. Still, she continued to paste, to create, to climb scaffolding. After each surgery: two months of rest, then back to the wall, precisely sixty days later. From this journey, a third identity was born: YU. A new series, under the sign of Memento Mori, took shape – an intimate counterpoint to her physical wounds. Yu explores death, disappearance, and the altered body. These are discreet installations, placed in memory-laden locations, mostly outside France – in Brussels, London, Naples – to preserve her anonymity.
The Cabinet of Curiosities – Reassembling Memory
In
2017, she acquired her first large-format plotter. This key tool allowed her to regain full control over her images: deep blacks, precise contrast, delicate whites. She rediscovered play. She embarked on a new project synthesizing her entire body of work: a Cabinet of Curiosities. A more intimate format, conceived as a collection of rare objects and diverse materials – slate, wood, glass, fabric – featuring images both old and new, all linked by the same poetic and plastic rigor. This project allowed her to keep creating, even on a small scale, while awaiting the strength to return to the walls. A living bridge between her identities, her techniques, her convictions and her scars. A work in motion, more resilient than ever.
2024 – Fragile as a Rock In 2024
A new challenge arose: bone metastases near the sternum required chemotherapy. Then, a carotid dissection caused a stroke. And still, she did not falter. She even laughed when a journalist compared her to “the Frida Kahlo of street art.”
She continued to develop her Cabinet of Curiosities – a format that allows each of her techniques and singular works to find their place: small formats or monumental frescoes, deep black-and-whites, varnished prints or hybrid textures. The cabinet becomes a space of artistic memory, an intimate, polymorphic territory she can inhabit – even in fragility.
Still Standing
This project allows her to keep creating, even on a smaller scale, while waiting to return to the walls. A living bridge between her identities, her techniques, her commitments, and her wounds. A work in motion, more resilient than ever.
Still standing, still creating, she continues to move forward, driven by a vital need to transform hardship into art, and to make the street a setting for unexpected emotions.
2025 – Silent Renaissance
The year 2025 marks a discreet yet decisive turning point in the artist’s journey. After months of uncertainty, her health has stabilized: the tumor has significantly shrunk, and the carotid artery has finally healed. A lifelong chemotherapy remains necessary to prevent any recurrence, but breath is returning, strength too — and with it, the drive to create. She resumes her artistic sites with renewed energy, carried by a major challenge: the complete covering of a room at the Street Art Museum in Grimaud. A first for Sonac, who, in fifteen years of artistic existence, had never before covered a space from floor to ceiling. The intervention becomes both a manifesto and a jubilee, celebrating fifteen years of exploration, collage, and urban dialogue. At the same time, she continues a deeper, more intimate work behind the scenes: writing texts, designing works, and setting up the scenography for her future Cabinet of Curiosities. Conceived as a living, sensory, inhabited space, this long-term project will open its doors in spring 2026. 2025 is thus a year of return, of maturity, of focus. A year in which the artist moves forward with quiet but steady steps, between resilience, celebration, and transmission.
MAJOR WORKS
1 “Affichage Sauvage”, since 2010.
With this project, Sonac reinvents street art by introducing photography into the public space in an unprecedented way. Life-sized black and white animal portraits are pasted on city walls. Each image, ephemeral and fragile, questions the place of animals in our societies while interacting with the urban architecture. The installations blend into the landscape, gradually disappearing, yet leaving an indelible mark on the collective imagination. This project is a reflection on the relationship between humans and animals — a silent call for wildlife protection.
2 “E.Doll Project”, since 2014.
Under the pseudonym Softtwix, the artist explores the complexities of the feminine image and the social pressures tied to beauty and appearance. The E.Doll Project is a series of large-format portraits of reassembled and scarred women, pasted on city walls. These powerful faces, both fragile and resilient, challenge the imposed aesthetic norm and reflect on the female condition, mistreated bodies, and the struggle to break free from societal expectations.
3 “Memento Mori”, since 2017.
Under the name Yu, the artist initiates a series of subtle and discreet installations addressing the themes of death and memory. This work takes shape in places steeped in history, where the artist recreates poetic and intimate atmospheres. Through sculptures, black and white photographs, and wall murals, Yu depicts a body altered by illness and surgical interventions — yet always present, always enduring. This project is an exploration of disappearance, mourning, and the strength of an invisible but deeply rooted resilience.
4 “Cabinet of Curiosities”, since 2024.
The Cabinet of Curiosities is a personal and artistic retrospective of over 30 years of creation. A hybrid space where every work and technique is carefully presented. This project includes small-format works, monumental installations, varnished photographic prints, and creations in wood, glass, slate, or fabric. Each piece invites the viewer to dive into the artist’s intimate universe, through portraits, objects, and visual testimonies of a journey shaped by transformation, struggle, and resilience.
