Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza was brought up in Paris from 1963 onwards, in a milieu of Italian immigrant workers. From 1977 to 1982 she studied the philosophy of art at Sorbonne University and art at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston as well as at the Pasadena City College, Pasadena.
In 1983, back in Paris, she met artist Daniel Hauser (b. 1959) at Le Girophare, a squatted factory. They started working cooperatively, first under the name of Chiarenza & Hauser and later on as RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co). From its beginnings their practice was based on feminist attitudes, negotiating critical masculinity, social hierarchisations and art historical canons, as virtually stated in early photographic works such as you are what you see we are what you want (1991), or I am a woman, why are you not? (1995–2001). RELAX draws on a wide range of media including photography, video, drawing and performance, often assembled in complex installations, that resist simple reading. Their slogan-like titled works may suggest a service by the collective to the public, but sometimes ironically disrupt this strategy. In 1985 M.-A. Chiarenza moved to Switzerland, first to live and work in Biel, and from 2002 in Zurich.

For the artist working collectively with RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co) means manifesting her critique on artistic ideas of autonomy. The “& co” in the collective’s name references temporary cooperations with different people not necessarily from the art world. For instance, in 2021 RELAX conceived their project HEALTH COMPLEX, featured in the exhibition Art as Connection at Aargauer Kunsthaus, together with staff at the local hospital in Aarau, Switzerland. In their carefully developed productions, the group in many ways reproduce traces of earlier works, or even objectify their statements to distribute and incorporate them into the physical world. In this self-referential practice lies a deeply self-reflexive approach, aimed at transparency and complexity alike, never easy to grasp and still inviting cooperation.

RELAX has received several fellowships and residencies, mainly in the Americas and in Europe, amongst others at the Swiss Institute in Rome in 1997. Additionally, in 1992, M.-A. Chiarenza began project-oriented teaching at Schule für Gestaltung Bern und Biel (the School of Design Bern and Biel) as well as in Zurich, and was a lecturer at Haute école d’art et de design HEAD in Geneva for over a decade, starting in 2008. She was a member of Switzerland’s Federal Art Commission from 2008 to 2011. RELAX participated in the Swiss group show at the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2000, entitled Less Aesthetics, More Ethics, and teamed up with architects Buchner Bründler to reinterpret the backstage zone of the United Nations General Assembly, called GA 200, at the UN Headquarters in New York City with their intervention INLAY (2004). In 2002 the artist group obtained the Prix Meret Oppenheim and was given the work year grant by the City of Zurich in 2016. RELAX has also been commissioned by renowned art collections such as Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich.