Joana Vasconcelos. Netless

Initiated by the Museu Coleção Berardo and curated by Miguel Amado, Netless is Joana Vasconcelos' first survey exhibition. Bringing together around thirty-five works created over the last fifteen years, this project marks out a panoramic view of her oeuvre and thus represents a unique opportunity for viewers to become aware of it or rediscover it in depth.

Vasconcelos interprets the current world through a unique reading of the mentalities, mythologies and iconographies of consumer society. Finding her inspiration in common imagination, she examines various problems of daily life. Therefore, acting in accordance with an allegorical impulse and a derisory action, she deconstructs the values, habits and customs of Western civilization in order to comment the present’s existence of the present, to frame the past’s legacy, and to envision the future’s paths. Crossing tradition with modernity, the collective unconscious with history, and the sublime with the symbolic, she questions identity, be it based on gender, class, or nationality. Her works combine cultural references (from artistic movements to daily expressions), quotidian objects with sign value (such as feather-dusters, blister packs of pills, tampons, domestic utensils, plastic cutlery, and pots and lids), and popular materials and techniques (such as tiles and Bordalo Pinheiro’s faiences or knitting and crochet). Ingeniously manipulated, these elements loose their meaning and make up a new form, which sense reconceptualises the original instance and thereby reflects the entropic experience that characterizes the contemporary condition.

Joana Vasconcelos follows the principles of Nouveau Reálisme, a French artistic movement founded in 1960 that, by adopting the avant-garde strategies of Marcel Duchamp (particularly that of the readymade), spread techniques such as assemblage, which is based on the juxtaposition of found objects. However, by contextualising the precariousness of the materials typical of Nouveau Reálisme in the light of a critique of the sign, the artist turns away from the barren aesthetic proclaimed by the latter and proposes a portrait of the quotidian based on the simulation of reality. This process is carried on through various stylistic effects: the citation and the appropriation; the defunctionalizing of goods; the large-scale representation of pre-existing images; the exploration of architecture on the level of monumentality, the site specificity and of spatial organisation; the mise-en-scène; the serial nature of production; the kinetic quality of the work; its activation by the spectator; the chromatic accumulation and association of its components; the use of language-games as an expressive device.

This exhibition includes famous works such as A Noiva (The Bride, 2001-2005), the series Coração Independente (Independent Heart, 2004-2008), and Marylin (2009). These works investigate the female condition, a subject matter that runs through the artist’s output. In effect, from Flores do Meu Desejo (Flowers of my Desire, 1996-2009) to Vista Interior (2000), as well as Wash and Go (1998) or the ensemble Sofá Aspirina (Aspirin Sofa, 1997) and Cama Valium (Valium Bed, 1998), it is the debate on the women’s status that is being expressed here. However, the exhibition includes other, less well-known works that deal with multiple political and economical topics. One might refer, for example, to corporate ideology (Ponto de Encontro [Meeting Point], 2000), the ostentation of class (Menu do Dia [Today’s Specials], 2001), the dazzled exercising of power (O Mundo a Seus Pés [The World at Your Feet], 2001), religious intolerance (Burka, 2002), and the security state (Una Dirección [One Direction], 2003). Recent works highlight social issues, such as the conflict between technological progress and the conservation of nature (Jardim do Éden [Labirinto] [Garden of Eden, Labyrinth], 2010), or illness as a metaphor for global malaise (Contaminação [Contamination], 2008-2010). Vasconcelos’s practice is so presented from an innovative point of view, which not only challenges the dominant approaches to her art but also recreates her particular vision as no exhibition has ever done before.