Who is the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos?
Who is itJoana vasconcelos?
Born in 1971, Joana vasconcelos is a plastic artist with a career spanning nearly 30 years, recognized for her monumental sculptures. Inspired both by pop references and the opulence of the baroque, the body of work ofJoana vasconcelos brings together a huge variety of media and materials, expanding from drawing to video or textiles, in immersive sculptures and site-specific installations that dialogue with the architecture of the place and call for public interaction. Through a creative process based on the decontextualization of objects and the recreation of symbols, the Portuguese artist establishes a dialogue between the domestic environment and the public space, between popular tradition and high culture, between ancient know-how and modern technology. . With humor and irony, she questions the status of women, consumer society and collective identity, offering new perspectives on reality.Joana vasconcelos has been working with artisans from all over the country, recovering and valuing national traditions and knowledge, while giving them new meanings.
The nature of the creative process of Joana Vasconcelos
Joana vasconcelos He started his career in 1994, having held more than 500 exhibitions, permanent installations and works of public art, in 35 countries. In 2000, he won the EDP Foundation New Artists Prize, expanding his national projection, and, in 2005, he gained international recognition with his first participation in the Venice Biennale, the most important world event dedicated to contemporary art. strong artist,Joana vasconcelos he never focused on just one technique, one method, one line, one way of doing things, always finding new ways to explore new situations, to reinvent himself, as he did, in 2013, with the installation of the Portugal Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in a boat, the Trafaria Praia, recovering the tiles in homage to Lisbon.
The nature of the creative process ofJoana vasconcelos it is based on the appropriation, decontextualization and subversion of pre-existing objects and everyday realities. sculptures and installations, revealing an acute sense of scale and mastery of color, as well as the use of performance and video or photographic recordings, collaborate in the materialization of challenging concepts of the scheduled routines of everyday life. Based on ingenious displacement operations, reminiscent of the ready-made and nouveau réaliste and pop grammars, the artist offers us an accomplice, but at the same time critical, view of contemporary society and the various aspects that serve the statements of collective identity, in particular those concerning the status of women, class differentiation, or national identity. This strategy results in a discourse that is attentive to contemporary idiosyncrasies, where the dichotomies of artisanal/industrial, private/public, tradition/modernity and popular culture/erudite culture are invested with affinities capable of renewing the usual flows of meaning characteristic of contemporaneity. Interventions in the field of public art assume special relevance in the work ofJoana vasconcelos, which has been invited to create projects in several countries, namely in the context of urban rehabilitation.
international recognitionJoana vasconcelos
International acclaim came in 2005 with A Noiva at the first female-curated Venice Biennale; where he was present seven times in total and would return in 2013 to the helm of Trafaria Praia, the first floating pavilion of the Bienal, representing Portugal. The youngest artist and only woman to date at the Palace of Versailles, her 2012 exhibition was the most visited in France in 50 years. In 2018, she became the first Portuguese artist to exhibit at the Guggenheim Bilbao, with one of the most popular retrospectives in the museum's history, reaching fourth place in The Art Newspaper's Top 10 annual exhibitions.
Over the years, his work has been shown in major museums and galleries around the world, such as: Palazzo Grassi, The Thyssen-Bornemisza, Royal Academy of Arts, Manchester Art Gallery, CCBB de São Paulo, Istanbul Modern, Moscow's Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, La Monnaie Paris, Palais de Tokyo and Hermitage. His art is featured in major international collections, such as Calouste Gulbenkian, Coleção Berardo, The Ömer Koç, Tia Collection and the François Pinault and Louis Vuitton foundations.In total, more than 30 prizes were awarded to the artist. She won the EDP Foundation New Artists Prize in 2000, was considered Personality of the Year by the Foreign Press Association in 2012 and received the Contemporary Art Prize in Israel in 2013. Awarded the rank of Commander of the Order of Infante D. Henrique by the Presidency of the Republic Portuguese in 2009, in 2022 he became Official of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.
Foundation Joana Vasconcelos
In 2012, he created the FoundationJoana Vasconcelos, with the aim of promoting art for all. In addition to managing its art collection, this institution regularly collaborates with other philanthropic entities in support of social causes, through fundraising initiatives, as well as the creation of special editions. Every year it grants scholarships, in the context of the partnership betweenDeveloped with the University of Évora, in order to encourage the study of the arts.
