Fafi: The Carmine Vault

The first graphic novel by the Toulouse-born street artist Fafi, following the character Birtak and his ambition to join the Paris Opéra Ballet through the artist's world of Fafinettes.

Drawn, coloured, lettered and laid out entirely by Fafi, The Carmine Vault carries her wall-painted figures into sequential narrative for the first time, in a hardcover art-book format that closes with ten additional full-page drawings of Fafinettes. The project began as a ten-page sketch that Rizzoli editor Ian Luna saw through the Paris concept store colette, which hosted the launch signing in April 2012. Published by Rizzoli's Universe imprint in 2012, the book is printed in the artist's saturated palette, with a lounging, cocktail-holding Fafinette on the cover.

Fafi began painting in the streets of Toulouse in the mid-1990s and became known for the Fafinettes, exaggerated, sexualised female figures that play on and against stereotypes of girlhood. Her work has since moved across walls, toys, fashion collaborations and magazine illustration; an earlier book, Love and Fafiness, collected her drawings and paintings.