TATIANA TROUVÉ

Her work is recognised for its poetic engagement with architecture and spatial perception, and she has received international acclaim, including the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2007. As Ocula Magazine observes, Trouvé’s practice ‘comes together as an ‘echo-system’, with each work responding to the next’,

Early Years

Trouvé was born in Cosenza, Italy, and spent her formative years in Dakar, Senegal, where her father taught architecture. She studied at Villa Arson in Nice, graduating in 1989, and later attended Ateliers 63 in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Trouvé moved to Paris in 1994, establishing her studio in Montreuil, on the city’s outskirts, where she continues to live and work.

Tatiana Trouvé Artworks

Trouvé’s art investigates the endurance of objects and the passage of time through sculpture, installation, and drawing. Her practice often integrates architectural elements, industrial materials, and found objects, creating environments that blur the boundaries between fiction and reality.

Bureau d’Activités Implicites (1997–2007)

This seminal series is autobiographical, comprising 13 modules that document her early struggles as an artist in Paris. The modules—such as the Module administratif and Module à reminiscence—archive cover letters, bureaucratic documents, and personal memories, reflecting on invisible labour and the implicit activities of artistic creation.

Polders (2000– )

In this ongoing series, Trouvé creates scaled-down environments and mirrored passages, challenging viewers’ perceptions of space and their own bodies. Works from this series have been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo and Centre Pompidou.

Desire Lines (2015)

Commissioned by the Public Art Fund for Central Park, New York, this large-scale installation features 212 spools of coloured rope, each corresponding to a path in the park, mapping journeys and histories of walking.

Les dessouvenus (2013–ongoing)

A series of drawings combining bleach, pencil, and copper on paper, these works serve as blueprints for imagined, fluid worlds without barriers.

Awards and Accolades

• Prix Marcel Duchamp (2007)
• Paul Ricard Prize (2001)
• ACACIA Prize (2014)
• Rosa Schapire Kunstpreis (2019)

Exhibitions

Tatiana Trouvé has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. In 2025, her exhibition The Strange Life of Things, a major solo exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, Venice, presented sculptures, installations, and drawings that map journeys through space and time, drawing connections between the personal and universal. Other important solo exhibitions have been presented at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002, 2006), South London Gallery, United Kingdom, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany, and Red Brick Art Museum, China.

Tatiana Trouvé FAQs

Ocula | 2025