Anne et Patrick Poirier

This artist couple create collaborative works that explore individual and collective identity. They produce large-scale models, presented as installations.

Anne and Patrick Poirier are pioneers of collaborative art-making as a couple, much like Gilbert & Georges. For 50 years, their work has explored the memory of civilisations, the fragility of which they, as ‘architect-archaeologists’, continue to metaphorically highlight.

In the early 1970s, their monumental models sent out a signal of boldness and freedom that expanded the boundaries of art and opened up new horizons.

This monograph, produced in collaboration with the artists, traces their careers, seeking to shed light on a multifaceted, complex and visionary body of work.

‘As children of a destructive century and of war [...] we could not remain indifferent and silent in the face of the terrifying violence of history, of our history. Almost all our work is thus marked by this sense of the extreme fragility of cultures and civilisations—that is to say, of memory.’ Anne and Patrick Poirier.