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Joana Vasconcelos by Osman Can Yerebakan
Using the beauty of large installations to reach deeper meanings.
March 25, 2024
Joana Vasconcelos, Valkyrie Octopus, 2015. Photo by Bruno Lopes. Courtesy of Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology.
A larger-than-life sign reads “Atelier Joana Vasconcelos” in front of the artist’s Lisbon studio in the Alcântara district. Facing the Tagus River port, the hangar-like workspace is populated with Vasconcelos’s monumental sculptures, sketches, and mock-ups; in adjacent rooms, different teams of assistants weave, bead, crochet, strategize, or design. The explosiveness of the Portuguese artist’s mixed-media sculptures—mainly in various textiles woven together—builds its nexus here and spreads to gardens, palaces, museums, and even boutiques across the globe.
In an industry fascinated by wordy statements and overblown theories, Vasconcelos produces at a scale where ambition is part of the practice. She runs one of the largest artist studios in the world, responding to a growing demand for her suspended octopus-like Valkyries (2012–) sculptures and other three-dimensional pieces that mimic stilettos, wedding rings, or Venetian masks. At the 2005 Venice Biennale, Vasconcelos installed a chandelier titled A Noiva (The Bride) that was made out of fourteen thousand tampons. The twenty-foot-tall sculpture at the Arsenale was almost touching the concrete floor, a gesture that has since become a signature in her Valkyries series. A gargantuan version occupies the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology’s (MAAT) main gallery in Lisbon for Plug-in, which is Vasconcelos’s first comprehensive exhibition in Portugal. At Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Brazil, she currently has another survey, titled Extravagâncias, featuring her large-scale work alongside the models she created at her studio with in-house architects and engineers.
—Osman Can Yerebakan
Osman Can YerebakanGiven that your sculptures are somewhat abstract, let’s start with materializing history, especially female histories, through tactile materials.
Joana VasconcelosIt is really strange how the works operate. I recently saw the Mark Rothko show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. He started as a figurative artist and ended up making completely abstract paintings. How you are figurative or abstract in your work is a big question. Anytime I can, I do drawings like this one that I am making right now. They’re pretty laid back; some of them are figurative, and others are completely abstract. The Valkyries series is completely abstract. Nevertheless, I have works in this museum show which are figurative, like the giant mask outside or the wedding ring that directly represents an object. Rothko started very figurative, and then he quit and produced abstract works for the rest of his life. I have to say that I have the pleasure of being both at the same time, and it depends on the work itself. Sometimes I feel the need to be very precise; other times, I don’t need to give any clues to anybody.
OCYBeauty is a tool you use to attract the audience to talk about broader subjects beyond the surface layer. At first glance, these objects are colorful, soft, charming, and they pull us in and unfold questions about femininity, value, and transcendence. How do you see beauty as a tool?
JVIt is the essential tool to make people pay attention to something. Imagine two plants: one listens to Beethoven and the other to heavy metal. When you bring in beauty, people can be fascinated by darkness as well. The truth, however, is what mobilizes more than beauty. I think beauty plays a very important role in the process of creating a harmony within the work. I always try to address this issue at both ends: we need to know about the uncomfortable to create the comfortable or the harmony.
Joana Vasconcelos, Valkyrie Octopus, 2015. Photo by Bruno Lopes. Courtesy of Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology.
OCY Along with this process, scale has an important role for prompting movement for viewers. They look, get near or go away from the work, or they even go underneath it. There is a constant physical play and discovery.
JV I see them similar to the wow moment in fashion shows. On the runway, the first thirty seconds are very decisive to build an opinion and make a decision about whatever you are looking at. In a way, I just use the same technique. After that wow, if you feel the need you can go deeper and try to understand what you are looking at, or you can choose to walk away. Most people don’t have much time to think, or they don’t want to; so at least I can offer them that first glimpse, that first moment.
OCY There is a strong reference to the Baroque and mythology, mainly in the Valkyries series. How do you determine your references, which are quite varied? And when you do, what kind of connection do you try to build between the present and the past?
JV Valkyries tell a wonderful, mythic story. They are a group of goddesses; they never operate alone, and instead always fly together. The unique aspect about them is that they are both warriors and goddesses. There are many mythic female warriors, such as those in Africa or goddesses in Greek and Roman mythologies. Or there are monks and warriors, like the Templars or the Shaolin warrior monks in Tibet, but they are always men. This is why the Valkyries are unique, and this made me think of ways of working around this myth with respect and most importantly from a female point of view.
Joana Vasconcelos, Solitaire, 2018. Photo by Bruno Lopes. Courtesy of Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology.
OCY You use a variety of objects. Besides beads, fringes, or lace in your soft sculptures, tampons were used in your Venice Biennale chandelier; and there are cars in this current show. You also use everyday objects to transform them into yet another object, such as the massive ring sculpture.
JV I use these objects exactly as they are, but what changes is their concept as well as their purpose. When I take an object outside of its given concept and add another layer, suddenly that object is removed from its purpose: it is now a naked object, exposed to new possibilities. The wedding ring, for example, is tied to clichés of happiness or luxury; more interestingly, it is a symbol of a form of success, the success of happiness, and the ring is a walking symbol of this. Today, who you show you are is, in a way, more important than how you actually feel. It is not an inside question but rather an outside question; there is a paradox.
Joana Vasconcelos, Árvore da vida (Tree of Life), 2023. Photo by Bruno Lopes. Courtesy of Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology.
OCY Could you talk about the MAAT show’s massive sculpture, Árvore da vida (Tree of Life) (2023)? It is a tour-de-force of a work with roots and branches spreading across the space; it is flamboyant, matriarchal, and attractive.
JV The work is about new beginnings. I imagine seeds planted and the tree growing leaf by leaf, and, hopefully, one day fruits will come out of it too. I initially had no funds to do it, and then the French government gave us some money, which we used to start building the sculpture; but we used all the funds before even getting near completion. And then the tree fell down. Producing something at that scale does not make sense in the logical world, but I knew I had to do it. Going through Covid and such a tough period in time, I had to create something meaningful with my team. They started embroidering leaves at home because at least we could do that. I was thinking of creating another Valkyrie sculpture, but the curator from Sainte-Chapelle in Paris encouraged me to finish the tree. When we completed it, that wow moment was something else. I believe there are moments where you establish a spiritual dimension with something and you enter into a different realm where anything is possible and life is worthwhile.
OCYYou came back to Portugal with your family as a child after the Carnation Revolution. Your new chapter in life also coincided with a new period for your country. How does this experience still follow you?
JV Tree of Life is about new beginnings, for sure. We, the Portuguese, came out of a period when we didn’t have self-expression. We were neutral in the Second World War, and after it ended we were not a part of the development of Europe. When the Carnation Revolution happened, we started seeing the world from a different angle. Suddenly, we were no longer concerned with our colonies, and we were also a part of something called Europe. It has been, in a way, a reconciliation movement during which we are establishing the connections with the world that we lost. We had spent so much time concerned with our colonies and the power of the empire.
OCY The MAAT show is also a love song for Lisbon. The Valkyries sculpture is dedicated to three historic neighborhoods, each famous for its own specific tile patterns. How do memory and place guide you throughout your practice?
JV Lisbon has been the same city since forever because we were never conquered, bombed, or burned throughout history. The city has been pretty much the same since 1115. We don’t have a problem with our identity, but we maybe have a problem of relating to other identities. We have neighborhoods from the eleventh century until today. I brought in the tile reference because the tiles belong to the development of the city. Different tiles from different periods have different colors, patterns, and meanings. Also, the sculpture at MAAT was a commission for a casino in Macau, which of course has a colonial history with Portugal.
Joana Vasconcelos: Plug-in is on view at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, until April 8; Joana Vasconcelos: Extravagâncias is on view at Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, Brazil, until May 26.
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