Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971, Paris) is a Portuguese contemporary artist internationally renowned for her large-scale sculptures and immersive installations that fuse craftsmanship, pop culture, and political commentary. Working across a wide range of media, she deconstructs everyday objects and transforms them into monumental works—provocative, playful, and deeply layered—often engaging with themes of gender, identity, consumerism, and collective memory.

After studying at Lisbon’s Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual, Vasconcelos gained international recognition at the 2005 Venice Biennale with A Noiva (The Bride)—a 20-foot chandelier made from 14,000 tampons. Since then, she has represented Portugal in 2013 with Trafaria Praia, the Biennale’s first floating pavilion, and returned three times overall.

In 2012, Vasconcelos became the youngest artist and first woman to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles. Her show became the most visited in France in 50 years, drawing 1.6 million visitors. She was also the first Portuguese artist to present a solo show at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2018, with I’m Your Mirror, which became one of the museum’s most attended exhibitions.

Her Valkyrie series—soft sculptures made from textiles and embroidery—pays tribute to notable women from history and has been shown worldwide, including Valkyrie Mumbet (2020), honoring Elizabeth Freeman in her U.S. debut at MAAM Boston. In 2024, she exhibited Tree of Life (2023) and Valkyrie Mumbet at MICAS, Malta.

Vasconcelos’ work has appeared in leading institutions across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and belongs to prominent collections including the Centre Pompidou, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation. She was awarded the Order of Prince Henry in 2009 and named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by France in 2022.

Based in Lisbon, she leads Atelier Joana Vasconcelos, a team of over 50, and runs her own foundation to support cultural and social initiatives.

“ I am inspired by everyday life and my perspective is led by a critical observation of the world around me. My creative process is based upon the appropriation, contextualization, and subversion of pre-existent objects and everyday realities. „

—Joana Vasconcelos