Joana Vasconcelos, one of the Portuguese artists with the greatest global reach. Arlindo Camacho (studio)
Over the course of her 25-year career, Joana Vasconcelos has perfected both the art of spectacle and discretion. Weeks after that meeting in Madrid, she unveiled his most ambitious work to date, The Wedding Cake, a 12-metre high pavilion in the Rothschild Foundation Gardens in the form of a three-tier cake with more than 15,000 ceramic tiles. She would also unveil her second collaboration with Dior, using a giant textile sculpture in the shape of a tentacle dome for the F/W 2023/2024 show. But at the moment of the interview she prefers not to talk about projects that have not yet seen the light of day. Her brief stop at Club Matador in Madrid had a simpler reason: the artist’s notebook, Liquid Love, accompanying this year’s issue of Matador magazine, which collects the water-related works to which the Portuguese artist feels most emotionally connected.
Q You can see the Tagus estuary from your house, your workshop is in the port and you like to draw in your bedroom, looking out to sea through the window. Why is water so important to you?
TO. Life on the water is like life on a mountain: these environments have an impact on who you are. I cannot live in isolation from it and at the same time I feel privileged because I am aware that many people do not have access to it. Much of my work is based on the convergence of domesticity and luxury, and this is directly related to water, which has become one of the great luxuries.
“A Jóia do Tejo”, a structure created by Joana Vasconcelos around the Belém Tower in Lisbon, inaugurated in 2008.
Q Why is the topic of luxury appealing to you?
TO. My path lies between the banality of the domestic and the impact of the luxurious. I’m very interested in building a bridge and changing the identity between the two because it helps me to re-evaluate given ideas.
Q Are you descended from the Portuguese royal family?
TO. My great-great-grandmother was from Braganza and sailed to Brazil with the Portuguese court after the Napoleonic invasion. There she was Duchess of the Queen. Then she became pregnant by the king. I had a great-great-grandmother, the king’s illegitimate daughter—quite a story. When they returned to Portugal, their daughter married into a Vasconcelos, a noble family. My grandfather kept the duke’s ring but then became a republican. As a child, she took me to a palace in Sintra where all the coats of arms hang and said to me, “This is our family.”
The ambitious work presented by Vasconcelos this year at Waddesdon Gardens in Buckinghamshire: The Wedding Cake, a three-storey pavilion with 15,000 ceramic tiles.
Q And you were born in Paris because your parents had to leave during the Salazar dictatorship.
TO. Yes, they were revolutionaries of the Maoist left. They were against the colonial war and went into exile in Paris so as not to have to take part in it. My father was a photojournalist and my mother an interior designer.
Q How did your family take the fact that you wanted to be an artist?
TO. You weren’t surprised. My grandmother Alice was a painter and my grandfather Álvaro told me that it took many generations to have an artist in the family. I also had an uncle who was in prison for being a Republican and loved to embroider. My family was weird. After returning from Africa, my grandfather bought two apartments facing the sea in Lisbon, one opposite the other. My aunt lived with them. She married very late and also studied very late, but was one of the first Portuguese women to graduate from the Sorbonne with a degree in French literature and a doctorate in philosophy. When I first came to Lisbon, I had just graduated from the French school, which was super posh. My grandparents thought that was awful. So I went to alternative schools. They let me take private Portuguese lessons from my aunt. Everyone thought she was teaching me language, but in fact she was teaching me philosophy.
Q There is an intriguing detail in your biography: at the age of 8 you signed up for karate classes.
TO. And I’m still a karate fighter today! [She pulls out her phone and shows a photo posing with a black belt on a tatami]. This photo is from last week. I was a professional until I was 28.
Q How does a girl with such an intellectual background end up devoting herself to karate?
TO. [Laughs] There were constant cultural and political discussions in my family. My uncle was a commentator at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. His generation, in Portugal in the 1970s, rebuilt the country after the dictatorship. There were always big debates in my house, which is why school seemed so uninteresting to me. And my father was friends with many young artists. I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by singers, fashionistas and painters. But at the same time, I was a girl in an upper-middle-class neighborhood that didn’t have much to do. One of the few activities close to my house was karate. All my friends went, so I said, “Me too.” It was about as far as I could go on my own.
Q What has the discipline of karate incorporated into your art?
TO. My family was so original, so left-wing, that my father didn’t wear a tie because he said it didn’t represent him. There was neither television nor Coca-Cola because they were symbols of American imperialism. There was a wonderful element of arbitrariness. And then karate appeared with all its structure and the rigidity of the teacher. It was pure discipline. I participated. I also did Kobudo [a martial art that uses traditional wooden and metal weapons]. These years have helped me to develop a very special knowledge about the body. Later, when I studied art, the intellectual development was much further. And later I realized that I had to bring all three together: the body, the mind and the soul.
Q Until its international success, art in Portugal was male-dominated. Why did it take so long in your own country to take it seriously?
TO. And it’s still a man’s thing, but it’s interesting to revisit this tradition because its most interesting and influential progenitors are actually women: Vieira da Silva, Paula Rego, Helena Almeida… In Portugal I achieved people’s acceptance. I’m the artist you recognize in the supermarket. The other day I was in a shopping center with my daughter in a hurry and someone came up to me and said, “I’m sorry, I just wanted to say thank you.” I said why?” “For your work.” “Thank you, give me joy! “I don’t care about criticism because it’s priceless. When people come up to you and say something like that from the bottom of their heart, you’re lost for words.
Q Part of your success is because of your immediacy, because it’s easy for many people to understand. Do you think the idea that art should only be understood by a few is outdated?
TO. Many of my colleagues say that they just need the recognition of their peers in the artistic environment. I think that kind of recognition is very important, but the artwork exists in a much larger sense. All the people who decide if an artist deserves attention. I am very happy. Not everyone has the privilege of having 500,000 people come to their exhibition.
Joana Vasconcelos’ “Fontanelles” series from 1999.
Gateway, a hand-painted tile pool, was installed permanently in 2019 at Jupiter Arland Sculpture Park in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Joana Vasconcelos’ design for Dior, one of the pieces included in her Liquid Love sketchbook. Joana Vasconcelos
Q I think Madonna visited your workshop. Did she buy something?
TO. She didn’t buy anything but came to me.
Q And how did it end up in your workshop?
TO. Because Valentino, the designer, came to Lisbon and organized a party to which Madonna was invited. When she appeared I was able to chat with her. She said to me, “You and I do the same thing. We talk about the domestic.” She perfectly understood what I do and we had a super interesting conversation about the conceptual in our work.
Q You use everyday elements to reflect on the female condition and the role of women, such as your famous chandelier made of tampons called “The Bride” or the Marilyn shoe made of pots. Do many gender stereotypes still have to be broken?
TO. There are certainly many obstacles to overcome. And it seems important to me to make it clear: behind a beautiful picture you can send a message that makes you think about these stereotypes. We argue about this every day, for example, when we see the news about Iran and the veil. My piece of a burqa falling to the ground is very graphic and colorful, but also intended to be shocking and thought-provoking.
Q A decade ago, when you were invited to be the first woman to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles, you were censored precisely for that piece of the burqa and the tampon lamp. What do you attribute it to?
TO. One is a burqa and the other is made of tampons. And you can’t show something like that in Versailles, that’s not correct. That was the justification they gave me. Tell me where is this going with the world we live in?
Q Duchamp, one of your biggest influences, will always be remembered for his toilet. In your case, what specific work would you like to be remembered for?
TO. Asking an artist is like asking them to choose between their children. Just as many of my works are there to be completed by the viewer, the memory of my works also belongs to the viewer.
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