Richard Taittinger Gallery Announces New York Representation of Portuguese Artist Joana Vasconcelos
*NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 18, 2020 / *Richard Taittinger Gallery is pleased to announce its New York representation of internationally acclaimed artist Joana Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos is a celebrated Portuguese artist recognized for her large-scale, site-specific installations.
Vasconcelos' career spans nearly three decades. She has created public works of art in more than 35 countries and has been the subject of more than 500 exhibitions. In subject and scale, Vasconcelos' works demonstrate an intrepid lack of intimidation as she skillfully occupies public space with her monumental installations, an arena almost exclusively dominated by men. "Visiting Joana in Lisbon was a revelation. Hers is an impressive model for a studio practice and business for the 21st century. She is an exemplary female artist and leader," said Maria Balshaw, Tate Director.
In 2005 Vasconcelos drew international critical attention through her participation in the 51st Venice Biennale with her sculpture A Novia (The Bride), 2001-2005, a chandelier made of over 14,000 OB tampons which was a work titled thus in order to expose the imposition of a hypocritical and repressed feminine sexuality to the corrosive action of irony and ambiguity. She went on to be selected to represent Portugal at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and created a floating pavilion entitled Trafaria Praia, made from a recommissioned ferry boat transformed with blue and white traditional Portuguese painted tiles.
In 2011, she was featured in the group exhibition THE WORLD BELONGS TO YOU, at the Pinault Collection/Palazzo Grassi in celebration of the institution's fifth anniversary. Vasconcelos is the youngest artist and only woman to date to be showcased in the Palace of Versailles Contemporary art program. Her 2012 site-responsive installation at Versailles dealt with her interest in using ‘democratic' materials to express ‘luxury', set within the context of the palace once home to reigning royalty of France. Vasconcelos commented: "Versailles is the ultimate symbol of luxury, which is a key theme in my work. Marilyn, my giant pair of court shoes, is a reference to feminine glamour; Coração Independente mimics the heart shape of a typical piece of Portuguese fine jewelry... It's a certain idea of luxury that I approach from a different direction by using 'democratic' materials such as stainless-steel saucepans for Marilyn and plastic cutlery for Coração. Versailles is so over-decorated, so overloaded with history and concepts, that it is vital to build a solid bond between each work and its setting." Her exhibition at Versailles was the most visited in France for the past 50 years attracting over 1.6 million visitors (Source from Portuguese American Journal in 2013).
In 2018 Vasconcelos was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Bilbao. I'M YOUR MIRROR was one of the most visited exhibitions in the Basque museum's history, and one of the world's most viewed exhibitions in 2018, reaching 4th place of The Art Newspaper's annual ‘Top 10' contemporary art exhibitions.
Currently, Vasconcelos is the focus of exhibitions at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the UK (through January 9, 2022), and at MassArt Museum in Boston, MA through December 2020. MassArt Museum's exhibition, titled Valkyrie Mumbet, marks the artist's first solo show in the United States. The site specificity that is characteristic of much of Vasconcelos' work reflects her tendency to consider not only the physicality of the location but its context and history. In the MassArt Museum show, she presents work from her ongoing Valkyrie series, named for mythological female Norse figures, which pays homage to powerful and significant women. For the Boston show, Vasconcelos chose a woman of significance to Massachusetts and focuses on Elizabeth ‘Mumbet' Freeman, who was the first enslaved woman to fight for her freedom in court in the state. Freeman's 1781 victory helped to set the precedent that would make slavery illegal in Massachusetts. Vasconcelos' work does not attempt to tell Freeman's story, but rather to embody the message of her story and its impact on history as a gesture of remembrance, respect and admiration.
Vasconcelos' work is represented in numerous private and public collections, including Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; MUSAC, Léon, Spain; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; the Pinault Collection, Paris and Venice; among others.
According to the Joana Vasconcelos Studio, "the main goal is to promote Vasconcelos' body of work (in the US), both its indoor and outdoor expression, within the gallery, in museums and public spaces. Richard Taittinger Gallery was founded in 2014, pioneering New York City's Lower East Side art scene. It represents a number of leading international artists - from every medium and photography - attuned to ethical values, human rights, diversity, feminism and environmental issues, which we deeply identify with."
*Media Contact:*
Michelle Vassallo, Richard Taittinger Gallery
Tel: +1 212 634 7154
Email: michelle@richardtaittinger.com
*SOURCE: *Richard Taittinger Gallery
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