A multidisciplinary artist, Agnès Varda (Belgium, 1928) is at the same time film director, producer and photographer. She is one of the most prominent figure of French independent films. For over ten years, Varda has also worked as visual artist mixing photography and videos in her installations.

Agnès Varda grew up in Bruxelles then in the South of France before moving to Paris to study photography and art history. Early on, she photographed Jean Vilar in Avignon, then the troupe of the TNP and the Théâtre de Chaillot, and made a name for herself through her photographs of Gérard Philipe and Maria Casarès.

In 1954, she created the production company Ciné-Tamaris and on a shoestring budget, she shot her first fictional feature, La Pointe Courte, for which she chose Alain Resnais as editor and two actors from the TNP, Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret, who were then starting out in the cinema. Public acclaim was to follow in 1961 with Cléo de 5 à 7 while Le Bonheur won the Louis-Delluc Prize in 1965. The director later moved to Los Angeles where she frequented, among others, Andy Warhol and Jim Morrison.

She received a César d’Honneur in 2001 and the Palme d’or d’honneur in 2015 (Cannes Festival) for her overall achievement.

In 2003, Agnès Varda developed a first visual arts installation at the Venice Biennale with Patatutopia. Followed by her installations Les Veuves de Noirmoutier, La Mer immense and La Petite mer immense in 2006 at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and Le Tombeau de Zgougou at MAC/VAL Museum.

Her work is held in the collections of MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, LACMA Museum in Los Angeles and CAFA Art Museum in Beijing.