Marie-Ange Daudé

Marie-Ange Daudé, also known by the initials MAD, is a French visual artist born in Limoges in 1964. After studying urban planning and development, she spent nearly twenty years working in real-estate development, where she came into close contact with architects and creative professionals. This environment gradually strengthened her fascination with the creative process, leading her to devote herself to her own artistic practice from 2008 onwards.

Her early work already revealed a strong interest in materials and reuse. Glass, cans, boxes and discarded objects became the basis of an environmentally conscious approach to creation. Between 2012 and 2013, she notably produced a series of 68 hearts, each made using a different technique, transforming the motif into an exploration of love, experimentation and materiality.

From 2014 onwards, Marie-Ange Daudé developed one of the defining aspects of her practice through the Intemporels portrait series. Working from old photographs, she brings forgotten faces back into view through a distinctly contemporary visual language. These figures, often marked by an atmosphere of silence and melancholy, establish a dialogue between memory and the present. 

A distinctive feature of her work is her use of unexpected materials including staples, stretched threads, tissue paper, tracing paper and, above all, feathers. Layered or suspended within the composition, these delicate elements give her portraits an almost immaterial quality. As light and viewpoint change, the faces seem to emerge and fade, creating subtle interactions between transparency, depth and movement.

Often centered on the female figure, her portraits explore recurring themes of memory, time, beauty, fragility and identity. Rather than seeking simple resemblance, Daudé attempts to capture a presence and an emotional state. Her own artistic presentation emphasizes the combination of femininity, aesthetic refinement, nostalgia and melancholy that characterizes these faces.

Her work received the Public Prize at the Salon International d’Art Contemporain in Marseille in 2016, and she was also nominated for the Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez competition that same year.

Working at the intersection of portraiture, painting and installation, Marie-Ange Daudé has developed a highly recognizable visual universe in which delicate materials become vehicles for a sensitive reflection on presence, remembrance and the passage of time.

Discover Marie-Ange Daudé’s artworks available at Galerie De Medicis, Place des Vosges in Paris, and explore her contemporary portraits created with feathers, transparency and delicate materials, combining memory, femininity and poetry.