Joana Vasconcelos

Joana Vasconcelos (born 1971) is a Portuguese artist known for her large-scale installations.

Biography Vasconcelos was born in 1971 in Paris, France. Following the Carnation Revolution in 1974, her family returned home to Portugal from their exile in France. She studied at the Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual in Lisbon. In 2009 she received the Order of Prince Henry. She lives and works in Lisbon.

In June 2011, the installation "Contaminação" opened the group exhibition The World Belongs to You, held at Palazzo Grassi.

In 2013 the artist represented Portugal in a solo show at the country's pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The work Trafaria Praia was installed in an anchored boat and at the same time a floating art gallery.

In 2018 Vasconcelos presented the retrospective exhibition "I'm Your Mirror" at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, in Spain, having been the only Portuguese artist to accomplish the honor. The exhibition comprised 30 works representing 25 years of her artistic career.

In 2020, Vasconcelos created a massive site-specific work, Valkyrie Mumbet at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design Museum (MAAM) in Boston, Massachusetts. This exhibition was her first solo show in the United States. The work is part of a series of large-scale pieces that the artist creates for specific spaces, in homage to certain inspiring women who are connected with that location. This particular work honors Elizabeth Mumbet Freeman, an enslaved woman whose court battle for her freedom in 1781 helped make slavery illegal in Massachusetts.

In 2023, she completed, after five years of work, The Wedding Cake, described as a ceramic sculptural pavilion, in the grounds of Waddesdon Manor in England. In 2024, she exhibited her Valkyrie Mumbet (2020) installation and towering Tree Of Life (2023), with its 110,000 hand-stitched fabric leaves at the launching of the newly opened Malta International Contemporary Arts Space (MICAS).

Solo exhibitions (selection) 2023: Plug-in, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Belém, Lisbon, Portugal. 2020: Valkyrie Mumbet, MassArt Art Museum, at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, Massachusetts, United States 2018: I'm Your Mirror, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain 2013: Trafaria Praia, Portuguese Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2012: Royal Valkyrie, Château de Versailles, France 2010: I Will Survive, Haunch of Venison, London, United Kingdom

Group exhibitions (selection) 2011: Res Publica, Centenário da República, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal

Gallery