Joana Vasconcelos lives and works in Lisbon. A doctor of Aesthetic Communication, she studied visual arts at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual in Lisbon. Her work, which is mainly sculptural, is based on the appropriation, reconversion and reutilisation of everyday objects to bestow new meanings on them. She employs these ingenious associations to question the contemporary society we live in regarding themes related to the role of women or social class. The relationship of opposites between the public and the private, the artisanal and the industrial, tradition and modernity or popular culture and erudite culture are constant themes in her oeuvre, as is the vision of Portuguese popular culture. In 2009 she created a work specifically for Es Baluard’s Aljub space, Garden of Eden #2, an immense garden of light and colour constructed using everyday, artificial objects, which broke with any idea of a natural garden using, as is customary for her, the relationship of opposites between that which is natural and technology.
E.C.
