The Museum of Contemporary Art of Ibiza will host from July 1 the exhibition 'Valkyrie Crown', by Joana Vasconcelos, a proposal full of color and symbolic element that will occupy the Sala de Armas of the MACE until October 31.
The work arrives in Ibiza after having been exhibited in such iconic places as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain), the Château de Versailles, the Jardin des Tulleries for Dior, Le Bon Marché or Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg (France), the Manchester Art Gallery and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (United Kingdom), at the Palazzo Bocconi in Milan (Italy), at the AroS Aarhus Kunstmuseum (Denmark), at Kunsthal Rotterdam (Holland), the Edifici Copen and Cidade Matarazzo, both in Sao Paulo (Brazil), at the MAAM MassArt Art Museum in Boston (USA), at MGM MACAU and Fosun Foundation Xangai (China) and at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel).
The Valkyries by Joana Vasconcelos are large format sculptures inspired by the deities of Norse mythology, who flew over the battlefields and brought back to life the brave warriors killed in war to meet the gods in Valhalla. Made with textile materials, they express the artist's creativity, through a great variety of teles, embroidery fabrics, hook needles and trimmings. The final result is a combination of volumes, textures and colors, using manual works and updating the connection between the different crafts of the XXI century. Formed by a central body, head and tail and several arms, many Valkyries also combine craftsmanship with technological components, through the incorporation of lights that - simulating vibration and breathing - endow them with movement and life.
Born in 1971, Joana Vasconcelos is a Portuguese visual artist with a thirty-year career, renowned for her monumental sculptures and immersive installations. Decontextualizing objects and updating the concept of crafts into the 21st century, she establishes a prolific dialogue between private and public spheres, popular heritage and high culture. With irony and a sense of humor, she questions the status of women, consumer society and collective identity.
Her international fame came in 2005 with the first Venice Biennale curated by women, with the work The Bride, followed by Trafaria Praia, the first floating pavilion of the Biennale representative in Portugal in 2013. She was the youngest artist and the first woman to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles achieving the record of visitors with one million six hundred thousand and managing to be the most visited exhibition in France in the last fifty years.
She has received more than 30 awards, in 2009 she received the rank of Commander of the Order of the Child Mr. Henrique from the hands of the President of the Republic of Portugal and in 2022 she received the Order of Arts and Letters from the Minister of Culture of France. Since 2006 Joana Vasconcelos runs a studio in Lisbon with more than 50 employees and in 2012 she created the Joana Vasconcelos Foundation to grant scholarships to students, support social causes and promote art for all.
His latest projects include the large-scale Wedding cake at Waddesdon Manor (England), the solo exhibition at Tang Gallery in Beijing (China) scheduled for July 15, 2023 and a solo exhibition at the Uffizi in Florence (Italy) scheduled for October 9, 2023.
