Joana Vasconcelos was invited by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux to create a site specific installation at the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes.
Faced with the challenge to interact with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture at the Villa Borghese, Joana Vasconcelos imagined the tree that the mythological figure of Daphne turns into when, fleeing Apollo's amorous advances, she decides to transform into a laurel. A gesture of self-determination and overcoming that found a parallel when - in the confinement to which her studio was forced due to the Covid-19 pandemic - the artist asked the craftsmen who work with her to create leaves from home. 140,000 in total, all hand-embroidered with different motifs, such as the Viana do Castelo canutilho stitch, ended up forming 354 branches on a 13 metres high tree. A site-specific creation for the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes in Paris carried out in collaboration with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux to celebrate the Cultural Season between Portugal and France 2022, curated by Jean-François Chougnet; the work reinforces the verticality of the link between earth and sky, the mundane and the spiritual.
