Olympic organisers this week unveiled the official Olympic Games tapestry based on a design by Franco-Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi. The brightly-coloured triptych gives pride of place to the Eiffel tower and two new urban sports incorporated into the competition.
The central panel features the easily recognisable metal latticework of the Eiffel Tower and a city skyline. The silhouette of a male athlete in blue and a female athlete in red sprint across a globe towards the Olympic flame.
The left panel represents a javelin thrower in yellow, under a moon beside one of the bases of the Eiffel tower, an allusion to the poster for the Paris Olympic Games in 1924.
The right-hand panel has silhouettes in black and green of a skateboarder and a breakdancer (known as ‘breaking’ in France), two of the four sports newly integrated into the Olympic program.
The tapestry was inaugurated at France’s official furniture supplier Le Mobilier national in Paris in the presence of the artist on Tuesday.
A group of breakdancers was invited to perform on the slick parquet floors.
A group of primary school children were also invited to trim the threads at the bottom of the tapestry.
Three years of work
Measuring more than three metres high and nine metres wide, the tapestry took three years to make.
It was handwoven by eight artisans from the workshops at Manufactures Nationales des Gobelins and Beauvais using 60 kilogrammes of wool dyed in France but originally from New Zealand.
“The list of specifications was quite long,” Marjane Satrapi told French news agency AFP. “I had to integrate references to the past, the future, gender equality and new sports... so I came up with a triptych.”
“The weavers with whom I collaborated asked me not to overload the design, not to go too far into detail,”she added.
Comic book author, painter and filmmaker, Satrapi, 54, has lived in France for many years. She became famous thanks to the graphic novel and film Persepolis, a portrait of life in Iran before and after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
“I grew up with sports,” says Satrapi, adding she was a fan of skateboarding and 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.”
"In 1976, I remember that the gymnast Nadia Comaneci won ten out of ten everywhere at the Montreal Games. My father told me: ‘To be excellent like that, you have to work hours every day.’ And it was this teenager who put in my head the idea that you have to work hard to achieve what you want."
Meeting of body and spirit
The choice of athletes of both sexes evokes the goal of the Olympic committee to be the first gender-balanced games in history with as many sportswomen as men.
The unveiling of the tapestry fits into what the organisers call the Cultural Olympiad – a programme of events and exhibitions bringing volunteers and community groups together in parallel to the competition.
Dominique Hervieu, Culture Director of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, says this concept already existed during ancient times in the Greek cities of Olympia and Delphi.
“We are, in a way, reconnecting with an Olympic ideal, a meeting between the body and the spirit, sensitivity,” he told AFP.
The Olympic tapestry will be on display to the public from 21 June at the Hôtel de la Marine museum, overlooking the Place de la Concorde where the Olympic skateboarding and breaking events will take place.
The work will join the collection of the Nice Sports Museum at the end of the Games.
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be 26 July – 11 August, followed by the Paralympics from 28 August – 8 September.
