On the occasion of the extension of the T3 tram line, the City of Paris renews the artistic accompaniment initiated on the previous sections. For residents and users to be involved in the development of the artistic program, the City called on the action of the New Patrons.

The patrons

This artistic commission is carried by a group of inhabitants of the sector gathered around Maison Bleue Porte Montmartre. This associative social center concretizes a project carried since the beginning by the inhabitants of Porte Montmartre: a place of proximity, a structure of animation of diverse and varied networks which adapts to their needs and their desires to improve their living conditions and promote social integration.

The commission

The patrons asked the artist to create a universal sign for this "world" district that can be a gesture of welcome. The artwork should be a strong identifying element, visible and colorful, a sign, a place where people can meet.

The artwork

Chosen by the patrons for the convivial dimension of her artworks, the artist Joana Vasconcelos meets their expectations by designing an artwork that highlights the lively atmosphere of its environment, which sends a happy message of welcome. Dressed in 3800 hand-paintedazulejos, this flamboyant heart settles in the midst of the incessant flow of traffic as a sign, a landmark for all users of this place, which is popular with locals and visitors alike because of the flea-market of Saint-Ouen. The artwork attracts attention thanks to the universality of its shape,itscolor, its monumentality as well as its rotating and luminous movement. The thousands of LEDs that fill the rounded shapes ofazulejosturn on and off at the rhythm of a heartbeat, offering two different visions during day or night. The artworksymbolisesthe identity of Porte de Clignancourtneighbourhoodas a point of convergence, as the cardinal point of Paris today and tomorrow.

 The heart of Paris is the first artwork of Joana Vasconcelos permanently installed on the Parisian public space.

The artist

Born in Paris in 1971, Joana Vasconcelos lives and works in Lisbon. The banal is her favorite subject: she shapes the bits of our everyday life, giving them a new meaning and an unexpected relationship with space. With a sense of humor and transgression, she extracts trivial objects from their context and converts them into monumental pieces she installs in urban landscapes, museums and galleries around the world. Starting from ingenious diversion operations, the artist offers us a complicit but at the same time critical vision of contemporary society and its various aspects, such as the status of women, class differences and consumerism. Her strategy is a dialogue between what is usually opposed: crafts/industry, private/public, tradition/modernity, popular culture/scholar culture ...

In the work of this artist, particular importance is given to artworks installed in public space.

Joana Vasconcelos has been exhibiting regularly since 1995. Her work has been internationally known since her participation in the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, with the work A Noiva [The Bride]. In 2012, she was the first female artist invited to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles. In 2018 a solo exhibition was dedicated to her at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.