Quai de La Joliette in front of the boat terminals coming from or leaving Algeria or Tunisia, a set of 19th century buildings houses mainly Arab or Comorian populations from recent or old immigration, in a more or less regular situation. These architectures are concentrated around inner courtyards.

These courtyards, which are the true heart of the building, are of square or rectangular shapes, of varying sizes, and strongly enclosed in the building. These courtyards seem to be a survival from another time and yet they concentrate in them all the questions of the present, the interplay of cultures and communities, legal or illegal immigration, but also the questions of intimacy and space: private, public or shared... Marie Bovo focuses on spaces that refer to collective uses where the intimate daily life is tangible.

These courtyards also show how some so-called popular architectures function like prisons, distributing light sparingly to their occupants. The exuberance of certain signs, the occupation of windows by plants, the drying of laundry, then appear as the most wonderful symbol of freedom.

Marie Bovo has reproduced in her work a gesture she was already doing while visiting these courtyards: lifting her head up to the sky. The photographer oriented the lens of her camera upwards, then framed all the first floors, the roof, up to the sky, including the network of ropes on which the laundry dries. The spectator is thus disoriented: the inner courtyards evoke both the earth and the sky, the bottom of a well and the nave of a church, where clothes would float like angels.

An emblematic series of the artist’s work, Marie Bovo’s Cours Intérieures have been presented in exhibitions in many museums: Fernet-Branca Foundation, Saint-Louis; Hôtel des Arts, Toulon; UCR/California Museum of Photography, Riverside, United States; Museo Riso, Palermo, Italy; FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille; Institut français de Madrid, Spain ; Trienniale di Milano, Italy; MAXXI, Rome, Italy; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, United States; SESC Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil; Musée d’Art Contemporain [mac], Marseille; CCC OD, Tours; Le Grand Hornu, Boussu, Belgium; Aishti Foundation, Jal El Dib, Lebanon.