Marie Chamant Paris, b. 1944

Marie Chamant visual artist was born in 1944 in Paris. She studied fine arts at the Atelier d’Art Sacré – Art Monumental on Place Furstemberg in Paris. From early on, her practice has existed at the intersection of art, social engagement, and the sacred. She participated in the Paris Biennale in 1963 and 1965 as part of collective projects related to religious and social fields: an action in a shantytown with architect-sculptor Didier Stéphant, followed in 1967 by the Centre Poly Cultuel project, an interfaith architectural structure created in collaboration with the architect-sculptors Les Simonnet and Bernard Turin.

 

As much a researcher as a visual artist, Marie Chamant has developed a singular body of work where language becomes material and the sign a space of exploration. In her prolific and multicolored artist’s books, letters unfold in all directions—clinging, dancing, repeating, or fading—in a movement that is at once poetic, graphic, and deeply symbolic. Her practice, which defies conventional reading, is rooted in a quest for meaning and a desire to return to the origins of language.

 

In 1970, after earning a degree in Art History and Archaeology, she met architect Alain Oudin at the Tony Garnier Seminar and Studio, where both completed urban planning certifications. From 1971 to 1976, she served as an artistic advisor at the Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR), working on the redevelopment of Les Halles, the Bassin de la Villette, and the Canal Saint-Martin. In 1978, she co-founded the Galerie Alain Oudin, which later became À l’Enseigne des Oudin and eventually a foundation in 2015.

 

Deeply rooted in both social and spiritual dimensions, her artistic work questions the foundations of language and the conditions of its transmission. From primal alphabets to the Aleph, from Chinese ideograms to ancient Hebrew, she explores the philosophical and mystical roots of writing. This research often takes the form of series or collections, with each piece representing a fragment of a broader reflection on memory, the sacred, and coexistence.

 

This exploration also resonates with her long-standing engagement in interreligious and intercultural dialogue—particularly through the Centre Poly Cultuel project, developed in sculptural-architectural collaboration with the Simonnet, and exhibited as early as 1967 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and later at UNESCO and the Adda‘Wa Mosque, around the notions of the city, the sacred, and the coexistence of beliefs.

 

She has created fifteen artist books, available for consultation at the Librairie Kandinsky of the Centre Pompidou and at L'Enseigne des Oudin, exploring themes of culture, urbanism, and the birth of writing, partly autobiographical but mainly focused on cultural and urban themes, "cut" (the word "cut" replacing "sacred"), the birth of writing, and the rituals of the labyrinth...

 

Marie Chamant’s practice is thus marked by a fertile tension between free form and inner structure, between visual exuberance and spiritual rigor. Her work speaks, questions, and connects—asserting creation as a universal cultural legacy.