"Smile you have Rights"  --  Sourires, résistances, espérances

Artist plastician, Agnès Winter has receivedboth a medical and artistic formation. For ten years, she has done multi-fields projects in favor of the European cultural identity and peace. Her work focuses on the expression of spirituality in the world. Lives and works in Paris.

Monument to Smile is a public art project designed for the "Parvis des Droits de l'Homme", in Paris.

Its objective is to promote peace, tolerance and the respect of otherness. It consists of a giant projection of tens of photography's of luminous and smiling faces belonging to inhabitants of the Parisian region.

On December 10th, at night, it will light up the façade on Palais de Chaillot with musical accompaniment.

“Can you smile for me?”

Agnes Winter photographed more than 800 people in the streets and parks of the various neighbourhoods of New York City over the course of two years. The hundreds of smiling and hopeful faces that she observed when taking her photographs inspired her to create Monument to Smile as a tribute to the city. She then chose 350 smiling portraits, assembling them into a massive collage that could be projected onto the façade of Rockefeller Plaza.

From May 31st to June 9th, 2007, Monument to Smile, the artist’s first public work in the United States, transformed the façade of 30 Rockefeller Plaza into a cascading mosaic of smiling portraits transmitted by 12 large projectors positioned atop Saks Fifth Avenue, across the street from Rockefeller Center. Monument to Smile was hosted by Tishman Speyer and presented by Cartier North America on the occasion of Cartier’s second annual international Love Day. The great enthusiasm and joy that the event generated inspired us to expand the concept to make the French smile as well and then offer to host a Monument to Smile in Paris.