Extravaganza with a Feminist Touch: An Interview with Joana Vasconcelos

The controversial but great Italian film director Pasolini once said: “We don’t want to be so suddenly without dreams.” Portugal’s wildest art genius, Joana Vasconcelos, is in full swing giving wings to her dreams. Her current show, her largest yet in Brazil, aptly titled “Extravagâncias” (Extravaganza), has been extended to September. The highly successful exhibition displays the artist’s eye-popping pieces in Curitiba at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer (MON). Shaped as a gigantic eye floating in the air, the surrealistic building itself is worth a visit. As the last (eye-popping) project by Brazil’s star architect in his native country, the museum opened in the capital city of southern Paraná state in 2012, the year the centenarian genius of modernist architecture passed away.

Joana, as she is known in her native Portugal and in Brazil, exhibited at the 2005 and 2013 Venice Biennales and in major institutions, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Uffizi in Florence, and the Palace of Versailles, where she became at the time the youngest artist and only woman artist to show in France’s royal, grand and gilded abode. At the home of Louis XIV, the prolific fifty-two-year-old artist, who boasts a big personality and has a wacky taste for clothes, displayed the much talked about sculpture, “A Noiva” (The Bride), a ceiling-to-floor chandelier in full splendor made of 14,000 o.b. tampons. Yes, women’s tampons. Last year, she planted a three-tier, house-sized wedding cake clad in pastel colors, cupids and Portuguese azulejos (ceramic tiles) at the park of Waddesdon manor in Buckinghamshire, U.K., which has since become a brides-to-be Instagram sensation. Presently she is also on show at Gottorf Castle, a historic castle in Germany’s northernmost region, and in October, her exhibition will be the main opening event of the MICAS museum in Malta.

Her kaleidoscopically colored sculptural pieces run the gamut from sweet to bizarre to heartbreaking. Like Gaudí, Yayoi Kusama, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jeff Koons before her, Joana’s oeuvre challenges the Western canon of art and is not without layers of meaning: She is a staunch feminist and fighter for humanitarian values. Her work is all planned, produced and crafted by sixty specialists in the artist’s mind-blowing studio in an old warehouse at the Docas de Alcântara, the docks of Lisbon, where she lives. Before the opening at the MON, she invited everyone from the museum staff, guards to the directors, for a meditation session along with her team, which says a lot about this socially conscious woman.

Curator of the MON exhibition, Marc Pottier, had exhibited the artist’s work several times when he was the cultural attaché of France in Portugal and before establishing himself in Brazil. He was the first to show her work in the country in 2014. “Joana Vasconcelos’ work goes far beyond the clichés some want to impose on her creations saying it is a kitsch version inspired on Portugal’s popular culture. Above all, the MON exhibition shows her monumental, unlimited creativity. Her Valquíria, in particular the ‘Valquíria Miss Dior,’ shows us this dimension and the room displaying the maquettes and models reveals the artist’s macro vision. She has an architectural vision but is also a ceramist, she goes from small works to grand, opulent pieces. Joana is not attached to any art movement, she embraces the world with a generous, positive-minded philosophy,” explains Pottier.

Joana, how do you describe what you do?

I’m a visual artist who, above all, works on sculpture. I try to bring a new perspective to the world as we know it, it’s what I consider the role of the artist should be. I love making people think and wonder, to see them creating their personal links with works of art. I love it when people leave my exhibitions questioning why we make the things we do. I love surprising and putting a smile on people’s faces! In my opinion, art should be enjoyed more, and should be less rationalized.

What pushed you into the visual arts?

My granddad used to say, “It takes several generations to produce an artist in a family.” I was lucky enough to have been born in a family with a passion for the arts and culture, and who always supported me. I’m also aware that each society produces its own artists, individuals who are free, not so subjected to society’s rules and programming we see in most professions, that is why artists are more apt to reflect upon the time they live in.

As an artist, what is the philosophy that pushes your creative endeavor?

I try to give life my very best. I constantly dream of works I’ve yet to produce and places I’ve yet to visit. I’m always dreaming of moving forward, pushing myself more and more. I don’t believe in looking back.

Your work does not reference nor follow any art movement, past or present. How tough was it for you as an emerging, independently minded woman artist to be accepted in the art establishment?

When I began, I had no idea what it meant to have an artistic trajectory. The only thing on my mind was to produce and make space for my work. When my friends gave me a hand to finalize my pieces, I saw the importance of teamwork—it’s probably the most important lesson I learned. Currently, there are about sixty people in my studio, all specialized in different areas, each one essential for completing the work process.

Let’s move on to the fact that you’re a woman fighting for your art in the male-dominated art establishment.

It still bothers me when I hear I’m the “first woman” to do this and that, to exhibit in such and such a place… Why haven’t other great women artists been recognized before me? The art world is still very much male-dominated, women are still fighting for equitable pay and the same opportunities. We must continue to battle for the values of feminism.

What about the experience at the MON in Curitiba?

My work is very much about the dialogue of my pieces with the architecture that will involve them; it does not exist in the void. On the contrary, the building where it is shown, along with its legacy and culture, adds layers of symbolism and signifiers to my pieces. For example, that’s exactly what happened to my first Valquíria, created specifically for the Matarazzo Chapel at the Cidade Matarazzo grand collective international show in the ruins of an early twentieth-century hospital in the center of São Paulo in 2014, curated by Marc Pottier. I find it vital to identify with the place I’m going to show my work. The same happened at the MON in Curitiba. It was a very special experience to see my “Valquíria Miss Dior” displayed in the museum’s area known as the “Olho do Niemeyer” (Niemeyer’s Eye), or create my “Cortina do Sonho” (Dream Curtain) for that marvelous white tunnel, the most photographed space at the MON. This synergy creates a dialogue between the works of art and the building designed by the great Oscar Niemeyer. For the first time in my career, we decided it was vital for the MON exhibition to also display the models of my works to show the intimate dialogue that takes place between art and architecture.

How about the influence of Portuguese culture in your art?

I’m very much aware that I wouldn’t create what I do if I wasn’t born a woman and a woman born in Portugal. I was only born in France because during the Salazar dictatorship, my parents were exiled in France, but I’ve always been marveled by the Portuguese cultural tradition and the bond between its arts and crafts that I honor through my work. The azulejos, ceramics, textiles, embroidery, jewelry, gold woodcarvings and the abundance of colors are all facets of the Portuguese savoir-faire that transformed me into an unabashedly Baroque artist.

Joana, what inspires you?

Life.

“Joana Vasconcelos: Extravagâncias” (Extravaganza)
Through September 22, 2024
Museu Oscar Niemeyer (MON)
Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil