Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos unveiled her latest monumental installation Tree of Life (Tree of Life) (2023), culminating at 13 m high in the deconsecrated Gothic chapel of the Château de Vincennes in Paris. Created during the Covid-19 confinements in 2020-21, the work is inspired by the Greek mythological figure of Daphne, who transforms into a laurel to escape the amorous pursuit of the god Apollo.
Speaking at the unveiling of the site-specific sculpture in late April, Vasconcelos discussed the work’s feminist message, its painstaking creation during the pandemic, and her own position as one of the few female artists. working on a monumental scale in the public domain.
Vasconcelos first conceived the idea after seeing Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century sculpture Apollo and Daphne at the Galleria Borghese in Rome in 2016. “The fact that [Daphne] decides not to marry Apollo and that she would rather be turned into a tree than marry him speaks to the willingness to go against the rules and establishment ideas like marriage,” she says. “It’s a myth of independence and a myth of self-determination and I think that’s very important.”
Joana Vasconcelos and Tree of life (2023) © Didier Plowy for CMN
Tree of life is covered with 110,000 leaves, mushrooms, mosses and lichens, stumps and branches in fabric sewn and embroidered by hand, all created by the artist’s team in confinement from materials that were already in the workshop .
“We couldn’t spend a lot of money; we knew what was going on and had no idea what the world would bring us next. [lockdown]. So I said ‘let’s recycle,'” Vasconcelos recalls. “We used all the fabric we had, and we started with the leaves.”
The recycling process also speaks to the value of climate awareness, a theme the artist sees echoed in the apocalyptic imagery of the chapel’s stained glass windows.
The work was originally commissioned by France’s Center des Monuments Nationaux (CMN) as part of the France-Portugal Season 2022 program of cultural collaborations between the two countries. A structural problem discovered during the installation of the sculpture delayed its inauguration for several months. Tree of life will remain visible at the Sainte-Chapelle until September 3 before moving to Lisbon; there are also plans to install iterations of the work in locations around the world.
Vasconcelos has created numerous large-scale public sculptures and is preparing another ambitious commission this summer for Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, a 12m high ceramic pavilion called Wedding cake. However, the field of monumental sculpture remains a world of men, she says The arts journal.
“We are not many [women sculptors] and we have now lost Phyllida Barlow who was a big one,” says Vasconcelos. “You have to have all these relationships with architects, engineers and construction companies, so it’s a very masculine world and it’s not easy for a woman to thrive. I’m honored to have this privilege but at the same time it’s not easy.”
• Tree of life by Joana VasconcelosChâteau de Vincennes, Paris, until September 3
