Jardim Afonso de Albuquerque

This morning we set off for the suburb of Belem to visit MAAT, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. It is located in two buildings, a disused Power Station and an architecturally magnificent modern building.

One of the main artists being featured at the moment is Joana Vasconcelos, a Portuguese artist known for her large-scale installations. She was the first artist to receive the EDP Foundation New Artists Award in 2000. Joana takes over the interior spaces of the museum’s two buildings and her work is also in the outdoor area, showing a series of works either previously unseen or not seen in many years. A further common thread across almost all of these works is that they are mechanical and/or luminous pieces, hence the unifying title chosen - PLUG-IN

Joana Vasconcelos maintains and develops the traits of irreverence from earlier works (in themes, forms, materials and working methods): an ironic, humorous and critical look at the things in the world and the nature of those things. What she does is steal things from everyday life and give them another dimension. What is poor becomes rich, as in fairy tales; and what is rich explodes into excesses that break the boundaries of plausibility and reasonableness. Under the cloak of her fantasies and commitments Joana Vasconcelos’ work contains the naked truth of the work of art as a reflection on reality; as a process that transforms reality; as a critical look at reality.

In 2012, Vasconcelos showed her work at the major annual contemporary art exhibition in the Palace of Versailles. She was the first women and the youngest contemporary artist to exhibit in Versailles. In 2020, she created a massive site specific work, “Valkyrie Mumbet” at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. This was her first solo exhibition in the United States. The work is part of a series of large scale pieces the artist creates for specific spaces, in homage to inspiring women connected with that location. This particular work honours Elizabeth Mumbet Freeman, an enslaved woman whose court battle for her freedom in 1781 helped make slavery illegal in Massachusetts.

I loved all her installations, especially the Valkyrie Octopus and Tree of Life. I can’t imagine how many hours it took to create these two installations.Les mer