Renée Levi defines her paintings as objects and conceives of the site of the canvas as a pictorial surface. Her practice at the intersection of painting, drawing and writing is also founded upon her personal trajectory, one in which multiple languages and cultures blend with one another. Very early on in her career, she began to carry out projects in public space in collaboration with her partner Marcel Schmid, with whom she also works for her exhibitions. Recent public projects have included commissions for the Swiss Innovation Park in Basel-Allschwil and a work for the pediment on the façade of the Federal Palace in Berne, for which she was selected following an open call organized to mark the 175^th anniversary of Switzerland’s federal constitution.

Renée Levi came to Switzerland from Istanbul in 1964. After qualifying as an architect, she began working with architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron (Basel) and studied art at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). In 2002 she was awarded the Meret Oppenheim Prize, and in 2019 the Geneva Arts Society Prize for Visual Arts. She has recently exhibited at Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2011; the Lyon Biennial, 2019; the Musée d’Art, Histoire et Archéologie, Evreux, 2020. Her work was also featured in the group exhibition La morsure des termites at the Palais de Tokyo in 2023. From 2001 to 2022, she was a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel, Institut Kunst.