Joana Vasconcelos’ (b. 1971) work has long occupied a unique space where monumentality meets intimacy, and where the decorative becomes deeply political. Her practice is rooted in transformation: everyday materials, domestic references, and artisanal techniques are reimagined at a sculptural scale, challenging hierarchies between fine art and craft, tradition and contemporaneity.
The series "Bestiary" (2009 - ongoing) is emblematic of this approach. Conceived as large-scale sculptural works, these fantastical beings are entirely enveloped in hand-crocheted surfaces, merging animalistic forms with the visual language of textile and ornament. Crochet, historically associated with domestic labor and femininity, becomes, in Vasconcelos’ hands, a powerful sculptural skin: tactile, obsessive, and unapologetically present.
When translated into printed editions, each creature in the series carries its own symbolic charge. Their names - Haendel, Copernic, Impetuoso, Cai Lun, Megera - evoke figures and temperaments that oscillate between culture, science, myth, and emotion. These references infuse the works with layered meanings: reason and chaos, invention and excess, control and vulnerability coexist within bodies that are at once seductive and unsettling.
Joana Vasconcelos’ practice consistently questions how value is assigned: to materials, to labour, to cultural narratives. The "Crocheted Creatures" (2023) embody this inquiry with particular clarity, standing as hybrids between the monumental and the meticulous, the playful and the profound. The print editions offer access to this universe, carrying forward the conceptual and aesthetic force of the original sculptures while asserting their own autonomy as works on paper.
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