Joana Vasconcelos
Born in 1971, Joana Vasconcelos is a Portuguese artist whose career spans nearly 30 years and covers a wide variety of media. Renowned for her monumental sculptures and immersive installations, she decontextualizes everyday objects and updates the concept of arts and crafts for the 21st century, establishing a dialogue between the private sphere and public space, popular heritage and high culture. With humor and irony, she questions the status of women, consumer society, and collective identity.
She gained international renown in 2005 with The Bride at the first Venice Biennale organized by women, where she has returned three times to date, most recently in 2013 at the head of Trafaria Praia representing Portugal, with the event's first-ever floating pavilion. A young artist and the first woman to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles, her 2012 exhibition was the most visited in France in 50 years, with a record 1.6 million visitors. In 2018, she became the first Portuguese artist to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao, ranked fourth best exhibition of the year by The Art Newspaper and third most visited in the museum's history. In 2023, she will have the honor of exhibiting at the Uffizi Galleries and the Pitti Palace in Florence, alongside classical masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio. Around the world, her works have also been exhibited at the Palazzo Grassi, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Manchester Art Gallery, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Kunsthal Rotterdam, the CCBB and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the Istanbul Modern, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the Centquatre and La Monnaie Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Hermitage. Her works are also included in the Tia, Ömer Koç, CCB/Berardo, Rothschild, Calouste Gulbenkian, Culturgest François Pinault, and Louis Vuitton collections.
She has received more than 30 awards and in 2009 was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of Infante D. Henrique by the President of the Portuguese Republic. In 2022, she was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. Since 2006, she has run the Joana Vasconcelos Studio, which has more than 50 employees, and in 2012 she created the Joana Vasconcelos Foundation to award scholarships, support social causes, and promote art for all.
For her first collaboration with the MiniMasterpiece gallery in 2022, Joana Vasconcelos revisits one of the most common elements in jewelry, the sphere—which in ancient times was a pearl—through the Extravaganza necklace, using a neo-baroque accumulation to create one of the most sophisticated contemporary necklaces.
Made of solid silver and in seven different sizes (ranging from 3 mm to 52 mm in diameter), a total of 285 hollow and solid pearls form this extraordinary composition. The complete collection will consist of 10 unique necklaces. For each necklace, the artist has chosen a color that will be applied to seven of the silver spheres. Carmine red, white, and black will inaugurate the collection, which will soon be completed with seven other colors. The artist has chosen to use a thick rubber cord matching the color of the necklace to sit at the back of the neck. This comfortable element contributes to the unique identity of this wearable sculpture, combining masterful jewelry-making with the simplicity of plastic.
