Alain Arias-Misson returned to Brussels from the United States in 1968. Since then he has lived and worked in several places, including Brussels, Antwerp, Paris, Venice and Panama City.
Alain Arias-Misson was already strongly influenced by the happenings of the early 1960s during his early artist years. The word and the letter are central to his oeuvre, which is presented both visually in his artworks and actions. He is seen as the inventor of the public poem, an extension of visual poetry that is separate from the happening because it is performed outside an artistic or aesthetic context, for example on the street or on the beach. His work is never neutral and has both a rebellious and a Dadaist side.
His visual work mainly consists of three-dimensional constructions in which spatial poems are created. By means of adhesive letters and multi-layered plexi areas or transparent space figures, interactions with the viewer arise that literally distort the poem. Edited photo collages and theater boxes are often made from his public poems.