Chiara Passa is a visual artist whose practice explores the digital dimensions of sculpture and architecture since 1997 using a wide range of techniques, technologies and devices. Her research, rooted in the late-1990s revival of immersive art, treats software as matter for shaping augmented reality (AR) sculptures and immersive, interactive virtual reality (VR) installations. In her work, sculpture is a mutable spatial condition, continuously reshaped through digital languages.

Her series Object Oriented Stones (OOS) embodies this approach. Conceived as both tangible and virtual, the physical sculptures are crafted from materials such as ceramics, lava stone, marble, and 3D-printed components, while the virtual counterparts behave as autonomous digital actants under the guise of NFTs. Each OOS contains its own internal logic, interacting with other objects and remaining partially withdrawn, enacting a digital ontology of space where material and code converge.

Passa’s works unfold across the liminal surface between tangible and virtual, extending and reconfiguring spatial boundaries. By merging real environments with digitally constructed ones, she invites spectators into a suspended reality, a double exposure to the familiar and the uncanny. Her broader body of work includes 3D animations, net-artworks, and site-specific AR and VR installations, often using Google Cardboards and strategically placed 3D viewers to transform ordinary spaces into geometric liminal zones that reflect the paradoxes of our fluid space-time condition.

Chiara Passa has exhibited internationally, including: Zabludowicz Collection, London; MADATAC XI – Bienal Virtual de Arte de los Nuevos Medios Digitales, Madrid; MLAC – Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Rome; ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; ISEA Vancouver Art Gallery; Off Biennale Cairo; 11th Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean – Cosmos: A Sea of Art, Athens; BizArt Center, Shanghai; XIV Quadriennale. Palazzo Reale, Napoli. Her work has been collected by public institutions and private collectors, including: MNAD – Museo Nazionale Arte Digitale, Milan; MEET Digital Cultural Center; Whitney Museum of American Art; GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin; among others.