Marie-Lou Desmeules — artistically known as Lou Rie — is a Quebec-born, Berlin-shaped, Spain-based multidisciplinary artist who transforms people into living sculptures. Using the human body as her canvas, she layers duct tape, pigment, and texture to reimagine cultural icons and personal archetypes — revealing the raw humanity beneath the legend.

A signature of her practice is the Light Portrait: retro-illuminated photographs that preserve her ephemeral performances in a glowing, cinematic frame. Blending performance, painting, film, and urban installation, her work moves fluidly between fleeting live acts and lasting visual artefacts.

Since 2000, Lou Rie’s creations have inhabited galleries, city streets, festivals, television, and cinema. Whether sculpting Iggy Pop, Amy Winehouse, Darth Vader, or an anonymous stranger, she exposes the fragile boundary between person and persona — inviting audiences to see identity itself as a work of art in perpetual transformation.