Photo: Luís Vasconcelos/© Unidade Infinita, Projectos

"The Palace of Versailles is the ideal place for Art. Artists have always felt at home, seeing it not as a space where their work is on display but as a setting completely imbued with art. It is a full, complete and rich place, where it seems nothing else can be added. It is the perfect setting to celebrate audacity, experimentation and freedom, where creative talent can be appreciated like in no other place.
My work was developed around the idea that the world is an opera and that Versailles is the operatic and aesthetic paradigm where I inhabit. The works I selected exist for this place and I envision them connected to Versailles in a timeless way. Walking through the rooms and gardens of the Palace, I can feel the energy of a space that gravitates between reality and the dream world, the ordinary and the magic, the festive and the tragic. I can still hear the echoes of Marie-Antoinette’s footsteps, the music and the festive atmosphere of the stately rooms. How would life in Versailles be if that luxurious and magnificent universe was transported do our era?
Interpreting the dense mythology of Versailles, transporting it into the contemporary world, evoking the presence of important female figures that lived here, and drawing on my identity and experience as a Portuguese woman born in France will certainly be the most fascinating challenge of my career.”

Joana Vasconcelos