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The triptych, which measures three meters high and nine meters wide, will be exhibited from June 21 at the Hôtel de la Marine place de la Concorde. The work commissioned by the Mobilier national will join the collection of the Nice Sports Museum at the end of the Games.
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Three years of work, eight artisans, 60 kg of wool, 19 shades. This Tuesday, March 12, Le Mobilier national presented in Paris a colorful tapestry created for the Olympic Games based on a work by the Franco-Iranian designer, painter and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi.
The triptych, which measures three meters high and nine meters wide, represents an Eiffel Tower and two male and female athletes brandishing the Olympic flame. The panel on the left represents a javelin thrower, an allusion to the poster for the Paris Olympic Games in 1924, the one on the right refers to skateboarding and breaking, two disciplines newly integrated into the Olympic program.
“I like this unifying spirit”
The choice of athletes of both sexes evokes the parity of the event, which this year will have the same number of male and female participants for the first time in Olympic history. “The specifications were enormous,” Marjane Satrapi told AFP. I had to integrate the reference to the past, the future, parity, new sports… so we imagined this triptych.”
Author of comic books but also painter and director, Marjane Satrapi became known worldwide with the comic strip and the film Persepolis, poignant testimonies of the change in her destiny before and after the Islamic revolution in Iran.
The work of the artist, who lives in Paris, was the first announced in 2021 as part of the Cultural Olympiad supported by the Ministry of Culture, an artistic program aimed at linking art and sport on the occasion of Games (July 26-August 11).
Marjane Satrapi, “passionate about skateboarding” when she was a child “(also) loves watching football: in a football stadium, you find a billionaire and a worker watching the same match, with the same passion. I like this unifying spirit that you can find in sporting competition.”
“The values of universalism on the one hand, French values on the other”
“In imagining this collaboration, we were looking for an artist who has a very visual style of expression, as is the case with Marjane Satrapi,” underlined the director of National Furniture, Hervé Lemoine, to AFP. Someone “who also carries in his reflection, his speech, the values of universalism on the one hand, French values on the other hand, which are values of adoption for Marjane Satrapi, which carries a more strong again.”
The tapestry will be exhibited from June 21 at the Hôtel de la Marine, overlooking the urban park, Place de la Concorde, where the Olympic urban sports events, including skateboarding and breaking, will take place. The work will join the collection of the Nice Sports Museum at the end of the Games.
