INSTALLATION: "TREE OF LIFE" BY JOANA VASCONCELOS

Joana Vasconcelos will take over the Château de Vincennes from September 14, 2022 to January 15, 2023!

Specially created for the Sainte-Chapelle, "Tree of Life" stands 13 metres high and its nearly 100,000 black, red and gold leaves have been embroidered and hand-woven in the artist’s workshops.
Joana Vasconcelos was inspired by the history of the place: Queen Catherine of Medici, widow of Henry II, continued the development of the Sainte-Chapelle and the park of the castle of Vincennes by planting three thousand elms.
The installation also echoes the female mythological figure of Daphne turning into a tree to escape Apollo:
The inspiring muse of this Tree of Life is the female mythological figure of Daphne. Desired by Apollo, she refused to marry him, asking her father to let her turn into a tree to escape her destiny. One of the most beautiful sculptures in the world, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, represents this pursuit: Apollo tries to catch him but his 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 became Daphne and which, to be true to its beauty, is carefully embroidered, with a lot of gilding and shines with its own brilliance. This gives birth to an elegant and dazzling tree for the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes and the 2022 France-Portugal Season, 13 metres high and at least 100,000 leaves, each handmade by the artisans who work in my workshop. We began to work each from home during the lockdown and ended up creating a textile sculpture that parallels Daphne’s powerful gesture of independence in a limitation scenario. This tree is the result of affirming life beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Joana Vasconcelos

Born in 1971, Joana Vasconcelos is a visual artist renowned for her monumental sculptures, with a 25-year practice that is also interested in film and drawing. She sought to question what craft can be in the 21st century. She integrates everyday objects with irony and humour, creating a link between the domestic environment and public space, while questioning the status of women, consumer society and collective identity.