This is Salon by Alison Saar, the official sculpture of the Paris 2024 Olympics

The official sculpture of the Paris 2024 Olympics was unveiled today in Paris : it is called Salon, is created by U.S. artist Alison Saar, and was selected by the IOC (the International Olympic Committee) and the City of Paris to forge the work that will witness the legacy of the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games. The work is an invitation to the public to meet and dialogue while sharing the Olympic ideals of a peaceful and inclusive society.The sculpture’s name, Salon, refers to the comfort of a private living room and salons of the American poet Gertrude Stein in Paris, where artists, writers, intellectuals, and musicians were invited to share their ideas and works.

The bronze work depicts a woman sitting on a volcanic rock, holding olive branches in one hand and a golden flame in the other: the flame is inspiration, illumination, and alludes to the Olympic fire, while the olive branches symbolize peace and victory. The woman is seated in a circle of six chairs, each representing a different region of the world and indicating a variety of industries, occupations and interests. The chairs, placed in a circle around the Olympic circles, are a stool from West Africa, a hand-carved children’s chair from Central America, a milking stool from France, a ceramic garden stool from China, a classic European bentwood chair, and a curule chair symbolizing the origin of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece. The installation, invites visitors to interact with the work, sit on the chairs, think, share, sing, read, create friendships and encourage collaboration. The sculpture, permanently installed in the public garden on the Champs-Elysées, was produced through five months of work by French artisans under Saar’s supervision, using local materials: volcanic rock was quarried from a quarry in Mont-Dore in the Puy-de-Dôme region, and Saar worked with Pauline de Gourcuff and her foundry, Fonderie Fusions, in Auvergne, to cast and cast the sculpture in bronze.

“I am deeply honored to have been chosen to create the Olympic sculpture,” Alison Saar said during the unveiling, which was also attended by IOC President Thomas Bach, Deputy Mayor of Paris Carine Rolland, Paris 2024 Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet, and Mayor of the 8th Arrondissement Jeanne d’Hauteserre. “I hope that this artwork, a gift to Parisians, will become a unifying place and a symbol of the spirit of friendship and interconnection between cultures and across borders.”

“Your art is an invitation to sit and reflect on the beauty of human diversity,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. "Each chair in this collection represents different cultures, traditions and histories. Salon is an invitation to dialogue, exchange, encounter, and sharing. In this way, your sculptures are a wonderful illustration of what happens at the Olympic Games."

Olympic sculpture is an initiative of the Olympic Art Visions project, whereby the IOC, through the Olympic Museum, chooses an artist residing in the city that will host the Olympics in four years (Los Angeles 2028) to create a work to be installed in a space open to the public in the city hosting the Games in the previous edition (Paris 2024). Alison Saar, in fact, succeeds French artist Xavier Veilhan, who created The Audience (2021) for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, a work permanently installed in the heart of the Japanese capital.

This is Salon by Alison Saar, the official sculpture of the Paris 2024 Olympics

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