Chiara Passa, visual artist (Rome, 1973) working in media art AR, VR since 1997. Graduated (M.F.A.) from the Fine Arts Academy of Rome, Master in audio-visual media from the Faculty of Modern Literature. My artistic research - part of the revival concerning the immersivity in art that began around the mid-Nineties - deals with the theme of software, from the creation of apps in augmented reality, to immersive and interactive works in virtual reality.
From the mid-nineties to now, I have built an artistic language through the immersive technologies which currently constitute the main tools of my artistic expression. My body of work analyses differences in virtual spaces through a variety of techniques, technologies, and devices, using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies as artistic media to explore architecture as a lively interface. So, at the end of the Nineties, I designed virtual reality and augmented reality video-installations and multimedia works with an ‘immersive effect’, using the media of the time that were mostly based on whole-wall Beamer projections, such as The CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) and video-mapping. I had to wait until 2014 to wear a 3D viewer to finally immerse myself in VR.
Moved by the deep interest I have always had in space and how it is transformed in and by the language of informatics, I explore VR and AR to comprise the intrinsic language and so on for shaking-up and challenging the static notion of architecture, by exploring the liminal duality between tangible and virtual place, achieving in art a strange oscillation between spaces. I use augmented reality to stretch the space beyond its limit and virtual reality to penetrate it until its most recondite place of origin. In my artworks, the emerging spaces are interconnected: the imaginary space arranged by the virtual effects and the spatial arrangement of the place itself. Spectators are unsettled by this double relationship by having the sensation to remain suspended.
Between inside and outside the space opens up to include several dimensions. The fourth dimension – that of time – is just one of the many that help people's vision. Spectators walk and move as if they were in the so-called ‘reality’, but the classical space is bended, expanded, and pierced: the place itself becomes an immersive reality/non-reality to be explored.
Yet, I work with 3D animations, net-artworks, interactive and site-specific AR and VR video-sculptures, sometimes made of Carrara marble, ceramic, fresco technique, plexiglass, or 3D printing parts. Moreover, I use VR medium to create site-specific video installations using a wide range of google cardboards. Typically, the 3D viewers are installed all over the real space, designing geometric shapes in liminal areas where onlookers can peek through the 3D viewers, over the wall, to immerse themselves into a re-constructed/resized VR space made of wired geometric angles and futuristic views, highlighting the paradox of the modern space-time condition, which nowadays is even more diluted in between physical and liquid space.

My work has been internationally exhibited from festivals, conferences, and institutions, including: «Object (RE) Oriented Reality» Solo show at Panke gallery Berlin (2023); «Still Life» Solo show at Zabludowicz Collection museum, London (2021-2022); «MADATAC XI» Bienal Virtual de Arte de los Nuevos Medios Digitales, Madrid (2020); «Object Oriented Space». Solo show at Museum MLAC Rome (2019); «Virtual Natives – Sculpture», Roehrs & Boetsch gallery, Zurich (2019); «Oslo Night show», HEK Museum Basel (2018); «InSonic» immersive art show, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Museum, Karlsruhe (2017); “The Ways of something”. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016-2017); “The Ways of something”. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016-2017); «From live architecture: Dimensioning», solo show at Furtherfield gallery, London (2016); «Off Biennale Cairo» (2015-2016); «ISEA Disruption», Conference and exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery. (2015); «Morphos», Vortex Dome - immersion media, Los Angeles (2014); Media Art Histories IV - RENEW conference, Riga. (2013). FILE | Electronic Language International Festival, São Paulo. (2011); Electrofringe - festival of new media art, Newcastle, Australia. (2008); BizArtCenter, Shanghai (2005); MACRO – Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Roma (2004), 11° Biennale of young artists of Europe and the Mediterranean countries: «Cosmos - a sea of art», Athens. (2003); 48a Biennale di Venezia (with Oreste group), Venezia (1999); Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia (1999).

Full CV here