Marie Passa

Marie Passa, born in 1971, lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, specialising in Islamic cities, she began teaching her speciality while still a student and completed her research thesis on the transformation of the shanty towns of Saigon by proposing a humanitarian organisation, which is still active today in many emerging countries. After graduating, she joined the international architecture firm Wilmotte & Associés and worked on redevelopment projects all over the world, particularly in Europe, Asia and Africa. Since 2010, she has been developing her photographic practice through her series "Wittgenstein". Photographing the interiors of modern buildings by renowned architects such as Le Corbusier or Luis Barragan, imposing colour filters that contrast with their apparent austerity, she infuses them with emotion, with an extra soul. Creating meditative and poetic spaces, she navigates between reality, fiction and abstraction. Refusing a descriptive and documentary approach, Marie Passa creates her images like a painter, taking her time. It is through this series, which was very well received in 2013 at the Aipad New York, Art Basel and Paris Photo fairs, that Marie Passa met her public. She will be exhibited in Paris, London and Tokyo in solo and group shows alongside Christo, Luigi Ghirri, Cy Twombly, Sol LeWitt, Richard Avedon and André Kertèsz, among others. Since 2015, Marie Passa has been working on utopias and travelling around the world in the footsteps of utopian architectural cities such as Brasilia (Brazil), Chandigarh (India) or Auroville (India). "Letters from Utopia" is the first body of work resulting from this research.

She is the winner of the Hariban Award 2016 (Kyoto, Japan). 
Her works have been included in prestigious private collections such as the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Bouygues Telecom, Guy Savoy Group, Fondation Wilmotte and the Jean Todt Collection, among others.