Joana Vasconcelos – by Ad Kreuser

Joana Vasconcelos was born in 1971 in Lisbon, Portugal. Not much is widely available about her personal life, but she has been in art exhibits since the 1990s. She became known more internationally due to her work A Novia, an elegant chandelier made out of tampons, in 2005.

Many of her works incorporate crocheted lace patterns, sewn plush matterial, or large objects made out of hundreds to thousands of objects such as pots, pans, tampons, and ostrich feathers. In 2012, She became the youngest artist, and the first woman, to exhibit their work in the Palace of Versailles.

Vasconcelos’ works tend to explore different issues such as consumerism or gender identity. In 2018, the artist claimed her 2002 Burka as her most feminist piece. “It’s about the limitations put on female identity, but also how this loss of identity can offer safety, even power.”

One of her more recent popular works is Pop Galo. Pop Galo is a ten meter tall statue of a rooster, covered in hand painted tiles and LED lights. The giant bird is based on the Rooster of Barcelos, one of the most important symbols in Portuguese popular culture. The statue was first displayed to the public in Lisbon November 2016, and has since traveled as far as Beijing, China.

There exists somewhere a film showcasing Vasconcelos’s creative process for an exhibition in 2013. I tried to find it. All I found was stuff about the pavilion where it took place. Her website, joanavasconcelos.com has a whole paragraph trying to describe her creative process:

“The nature of Joana Vasconcelos’s creative process is based on the appropriation, decontextualisation and subversion of pre-existent objects and everyday realities…. From this process there derives a speech which is attentive to contemporary idiosyncrasies…”