The Pavillon du Sommeil: towards the light!

Artist Joseph Dadoune drew inspiration from the architectural richness of the site to create this Pavillon du Sommeil. The rectangular structure is designed with openings made of coloured panels and sheets of glass, most of which are cobalt blue, the blue used for stained glass windows by the 12th-century abbot of Saint-Denis Suger, one of the first creators of Gothic art. The installation echoes the stained-glass windows that surround it through the coloured glass panels in the upper section, offering visitors a moment of interiority, of dreaming and contemplating the beauty of the site, in the direction of the light...

For the artist, the interior of the Pavillon du Sommeil, a moment of intimacy and spirituality, becomes a mirror of the spirit and soul, a journey towards the heights of the basilica, towards the symbolic sky.

The two-metre-long, one-and-a-half-metre-high wooden structure that forms the Pavillon du Sommeil is covered in a white polymer coating, decorated with a motif in the shape of an infinite wave gilded in bronze. The artist drew his inspiration from the water table in the Sinai desert to decorate the walls of his Pavillon du Sommeil. Gold, a key element in the artist's work, evokes the vermeil or brass of the reliquaries at the head of the basilica. Bags of eucalyptus and thyme leaves will perfume the space, creating a unique atmosphere. Joseph Dadoune imagines this space as a haven of peace and rest. The Pavilion is designed in a language that oscillates between the simplicity of noble materials and a dazzling royal aesthetic. Tracks cross: between the floor and the Gothic arches, between the recumbent figures frozen in time, between the world here and the world above.

The Pavillon du Sommeil is housed in the Basilica's unique collection of over 70 royal recumbents. Initially painted in bright colours, these funerary sculptures, under which no body is present, represent the figures lying down, their eyes usually open, in a state of sleep awaiting the Resurrection. The recumbent figures in the monument all face east, towards the rising sun, the symbol of divine light.

Among these sculptures, in the south arm of the transept, the only recumbent in the basilica, that of King Charles I of Anjou, brother of Saint Louis, King of Naples, King of Sicily, born in 1227, died in 1285, buried in the Jacobins Convent in Paris, is closest to the Pavillon du Sommeil. An opening in the Pavillon du Sommeil allows visitors to turn their gaze towards this figure, an army leader and poet, as well as towards the other recumbent figures nearby.

The Pavillon du Sommeil faces east, so that visitors are symbolically facing in the same direction as the recumbent figures.

Joseph Dadoune, born in Nice on 24 April 1975, also known as the artist Dadoune Miyazawa, is a multidisciplinary artist combining video, photography, performance, drawing, painting, sound, installation and architecture. His work explores the tensions between East and West, the real and the imaginary, the intimate and the political, tackling the themes of exile, identity, gender and contemporary symbolic violence.

He made a name for himself with his film Sion (2006-2007), starring Ronit Elkabetz and supported by the Louvre Museum. In 2008, he launched the In the Desert project, centred on the town of Ofakim in the Negev desert. It combines films, archives and participatory actions.

From 2010 onwards, he developed monumental works in tar, exhibited notably at the Fondation Ricard. His key works include Impossible Calendars (2013, Tel Aviv Museum) and Barrière protectrice (2017, published by Arnaud Bizalion).

In 2017, he was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. The same year, his project Un Printemps arabe entered the collections of the Centre Pompidou, and he exhibited at Versailles for the Nuit de la Création(Sillons).

In 2018 he received the Renée and Léonce Bernheim Foundation Prize and took part in the exhibition To the End of Land at the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi). In 2019, he will be exhibiting at the Ein Harod Museum.

In 2020, he will publish Fresh Light (ed. Arnaud Bizalion, text by Donatien Grau). In 2021, he exhibited IncarnaSion at the Le Minotaure and Alain Le Gaillard galleries, accompanied by a catalogue.

In 2022, he exhibited in India with Leor Grady, designed the poster for the Grasse Truffle Festival, took part in the Nice Biennial(Les fleurs du mâle, Musée Anatole Jakovsky) and exhibited Blancs at the Galerie Eva Vautier.

In 2023, he was invited by the Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme for Le cri des fleurs, and a 304-page monograph tracing his work from 1996 to 2022 was published by Arnaud Bizalion.

In 2024, he presented his recent drawings at the Drawing Now fair in Paris with Galerie Eva Vautier, and a work was exhibited at the Surréel exhibition by Galerie Le Minotaure.

Dadoune has taken part in more than 250 exhibitions, and his work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Musée du Louvre, the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain and several FRACs.

For more information: Artist's website