Joana Vasconcelos at the Château de Vincennes, the monumental installation is revealed in photos

Tree of life, this is the name of the spectacular installation imagined by the internationally known artist : Joana Vasconcelos, whose monumental works at the Château de Versailles, still enchant our memories, 10 years later.

As part of the France-Portugal Season, the Monuments Nationaux invited Joana Vasconcelos to invest the Château de Vincennes. For the occasion, she imagined an extraordinary work of art, 13 meters high, composed of at least 110,000 black, red and gold leaves , all embroidered and woven by hand in the artist's workshops.

The inauguration of this installation in the Sainte-Chapelle, which was to be held in September 2022, has finally been postponed to this spring 2023 for technical reasons. It is now from April 28 to September 3 that one can admire the exceptional work of the artist.

For this gigantic creation, Joana Vasconcelos was inspired by Queen Catherine de Medici, widow of Henry II, who, following the king, worked for the development of the Saint-Chapelle, the castle and the park. A park where she had no less than 3,000 elms planted.

" This history and this context could only fascinate Joana Vasconcelos: to render in an ephemeral way the splendor of the decor of La Chapelle, in homage to the extraordinary trajectory of Catherine de Medici," says Jean-François Chougnet, curator of the exhibition.

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This installation is also a reminder of the female mythological figure of Daphne who transforms herself into a tree to escape Apollo.

"The inspiring muse of this Tree of Life is the mythological female figure of Daphne. Desired by Apollo, she refused to marry him, asking her father to let her turn into a tree to escape her fate. One of the most beautiful sculptures in the world, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, depicts this pursuit: Apollo tries to catch her but her fingers have already begun to turn into laurel leaves. What I would like to create for this piece is the completion of this transformation, the laurel that Daphne has become and which, to be true to her beauty, is carefully embroidered, with much gilding and shines with its own brilliance. The result is an elegant and vibrant tree for the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes and the France-Portugal Season 2022, 13 meters high and with at least 100,000 leaves, each and every one of them handmade by the artisans who work in my workshop. We each began working from home during the lockdown and ended up creating a textile sculpture that parallels Daphne's powerful gesture of independence in a scenario of limitation. This tree is the result of affirming life beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, " says Joana Vasconcelos .

Known for her monumental sculptures, Joana Vasconcelos explores the notion of craft in the 21st century through an approach imbued with irony and humor. She uses everyday objects to create links between the domestic environment and the public space, while questioning the status of women, consumer society and collective identity.

So, would you like to discover this monumental exhibition?