Joana Vasconcelos

Biography

In 2012, a few days before her exhibition opened at Versailles, “The Bride” was removed from it. It is a chandelier about six metres high whose crystal pendants are replaced by tampons. The decision was taken by Catherine Pégard, president of the public body that runs the palace. She cited the work’s absence from the original plan, the diversity of the palace’s audience and the view that “the château is not a gallery”. Vasconcelos replied that the tampon remained “an object forbidden by society”. Later that year “The Bride” was shown after all, at Le Centquatre in Paris.

Joana Vasconcelos was born on 8 November 1971 in Paris, where her parents were living in exile because of their opposition to the Estado Novo regime. After the Carnation Revolution of 1974 the family returned to Portugal and settled in Lisbon, when the girl was about three. Her father, Luís Vasconcelos, was a photojournalist, her mother had studied decorative arts at the Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva Foundation, her grandmother was a painter and an aunt was a poet. Joana attended the French lycée in Lisbon, then the Escola Artística António Arroio; she has practised karate since childhood. From 1989 to 1996 she studied at Ar.Co (Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual) in Lisbon: drawing (1989–1994), jewellery (1991–1995), then the advanced fine arts course (1994–1996). In 1991–1992 she completed the first year of the design course at IADE. She began her career at Galeria 111 in Lisbon, where she met Júlio Pomar, Paula Rego and Graça Morais.

She began exhibiting in the mid-1990s. “Flowers of My Desire” (1996), “Aspirin Sofa” (1997), “Valium Bed” (1998) and www.fatimashop (2002), a Piaggio delivery van converted into a mobile shop selling illuminated statues of Our Lady of Fátima, set out her methods: take a mass-produced domestic or devotional object and enlarge it, multiply it or move it into another context. In 2000 she won the EDP New Artists Prize, and in 2003 the Tabaqueira Public Art Prize, for a project for the square in front of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon.

At the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, in the Arsenale exhibition “Always a Little Further” (curated by Rosa Martínez), “The Bride” brought her international attention. The work hung near pieces by the Guerrilla Girls; one reviewer accused her of crudely equating the work with female-coded materials. Then came the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in Japan (2006), “Contaminação” at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2008) and a group exhibition at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow (2009). In 2010 she had the solo show “I Will Survive” at Haunch of Venison in London and the survey “Sem Rede” (“Netless”) at the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon. In June 2011 her textile installation “Contaminação” (“Contamination”, 2008–2010) opened the exhibition “The World Belongs to You” at Palazzo Grassi in Venice; the work is in the Pinault Collection.

At Versailles, from 19 June to 30 September 2012, she showed after Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Xavier Veilhan, Bernar Venet and Lee Ufan, and was the first woman and the youngest artist in the series. The curator was Jean-François Chougnet. “Marilyn” stood in the Hall of Mirrors and “Perruque” (“Wig”) in the Queen’s Bedchamber, along with a Bell 47 helicopter covered in ostrich feathers, gold leaf and Swarovski crystals (“Lilicoptère”) and three textile “Valkyries” in the Galerie des Batailles. The exhibition was reported to have drawn about 1.6 million visitors. In 2013 Vasconcelos represented Portugal at the 55th Venice Biennale with “Trafaria Praia” (curator Miguel Amado): a decommissioned Lisbon cacilheiro ferry became the Biennale’s first floating pavilion. The hull was clad in a hand-painted azulejo panorama of Lisbon, 60 metres long, made by the Viúva Lamego tile factory, and inside was a blue environment of crocheted forms and light.

Her best-known series was begun in 2004: the “Valkyries”, suspended, tentacular textile sculptures of crochet, felt appliqué, fabric, ornaments and LEDs. They are usually made for a particular building and named after a woman connected with it: “Egeria” (2018) for the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and “Valkyrie Mumbet” (2020) for the opening of the MassArt Art Museum in Boston, in honour of Elizabeth Freeman, a formerly enslaved woman whose successful freedom suit of 1781 contributed to the end of slavery in Massachusetts.

In 2018 the retrospective “I’m Your Mirror” in Bilbao (curators Enrique Juncosa and Petra Joos) made her the first Portuguese artist to hold a solo exhibition at that museum; about thirty works from 1997 onwards were then shown in Porto, at the Serralves Museum, where almost 600,000 people saw it, and at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. Among her other works are “Suspensão” (2017), a luminous rosary 26 metres long above the entrance to the Basilica of the Holy Trinity at Fátima, first lit for Pope Francis’s visit on 12 May 2017; “Solitaire” (2018), a seven-metre ring made of gold-coloured car wheel rims topped by a pyramid of crystal glasses; and “Tree of Life” (2023), a 13-metre tree made of more than 100,000 hand-stitched elements for the Sainte-Chapelle of the Château de Vincennes.

In 2023–2024 she exhibited at the Uffizi Galleries and Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and at MAAT in Lisbon her “Plug-in” drew more than 260,000 visits by the end of March 2024. In 2023 she completed, after five years of work, “The Wedding Cake”, a three-tier ceramic pavilion 12 metres high for the grounds of Waddesdon Manor in England. In 2025 she became the first Portuguese artist to design a label for Château Mouton Rothschild (the work “Paraíso”, for the 2023 vintage). The exhibition “Transfiguration” opened at the Museo Picasso Málaga on 29 May 2026.

Her studio, Atelier Joana Vasconcelos, founded in 2006, is in the Doca de Alcântara district of Lisbon and has about fifty staff. Much of the crochet and embroidery is done by women artisans in Portuguese towns with a textile tradition, above all Nisa. In 2012 she created the Joana Vasconcelos Foundation, which awards study grants, preserves her archive and supports social projects. In 2009 she was made a Commander of the Order of Prince Henry, and in 2022 an Officer of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.