The UK’s largest ever exhibition by celebrated Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971) is extended until January 2022. The project comprises vibrant, sometimes monumental, sculpture, using fabric, needlework and crochet alongside everyday objects, from a laundry drying rack to car wheel hubs. By incorporating items associated with domestic work and craft, Vasconcelos comments from a feminist perspective on national and collective identity, cultural tradition and women’s roles in society. Her 12-metre-long Valkyrie Marina Rinaldi honours the extraordinarily resilient great-grandmother of the founder of Max Mara fashion brand, whilst Marilyn articulates worlds of domesticity and celebrity in a pair of massive stiletto shoes made from stainless steel saucepans. Vasconcelos’s work has been recognised with major exhibitions, including at the Palace of Versailles, Paris (2012), where she was the first woman and youngest artist to present a solo exhibition. In 2018 she was the first Portuguese artist to present a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao and in 2020 her Valkyrie Mumbet premièred at MassArt, Boston.

https://ysp.org.uk/exhibitions/joanavasconcelos

Image credit: Joana Vasconcelos, Tutti Frutti, 2019, Photo © Jonty Wilde, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park.