CIELS

GRAND PALAIS PARIS

2025

Ciels is a unique, site-specific artwork/commission dedicated to the lighting design of the glass roof of the Nef of the Grand Palais.
Unveiled from September 2025 and unfolding over a ten-year period, Ciels was created following an international call for projects and upon the recommendation of a selection committee bringing together twelve qualified experts — made possible through the patronage of the ENGIE Foundation.

Like an irresistible escape, echoing the instinctive gesture of crossing the threshold of the Grand Palais: lifting one’s eyes toward the Dome.
A journey to elsewhere, while remaining still.

In the plural, Ciels evokes the artwork’s infinite metamorphoses, like those of the celestial vault which, hour after hour, sweeps across one tableau after another. It reveals itself at every moment, permeated by light.
Ciels is a narrative of light and color, reflecting the vibrant life of the Grand Palais in rhythm with day and night, the seasons and the years.
Evanescent and in motion, never the same and always different, it brings together the infinitely small and the infinitely vast: an extraordinary magma of imaginations in constant evolution.

In resonance with nature as well as with the diversity of the city, Ciels leads us back to origins, to organic rhythms and deep time.
It offers a shared ballet, a collective sense of wonder that, for a fleeting moment, suspends the logic of time to give way to the magic of the augmented space of the Grand Palais.

Original Music: Thomas Vaquié