Strangers in the Night (2000) by Joana Vasconcelos
Location: Room 48, Ground floor.
Within the context of the 13th Mostra Portuguesa - the principal event that celebrates Portuguese culture in Spain, organised by the Portuguese embassy and the Camões-Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua - the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting the installation Strangers in the Night (2000) by the artist Joana Vasconcelos (born Paris, 1971).
Vasconcelos’s sculptures and installations reveal a surprising sense of scale and a mastery of colour. They are created with the use of elements taken from everyday life that are transformed into gigantic cult objects while they also involve performance, video and photography. From the starting part of these witty transformations, evocations of ready-mades and found objects and the language of nouveau realisme and Pop Art, Vasconcelos offers a knowing but simultaneously critical vision of contemporary society. She is particularly interested in the situation of women, class distinctions and national identities, and when giving form to these ideas she bears in mind the dichotomies to be found between craft and industry, private and public, tradition and modernity and popular and elite culture.
Joana Vasconcelos lives and works in Lisbon and has regularly exhibited her work since the 1990s. Her international recognition increased following her participation in the Venice Biennial in 2005. Significant moments in her recent career include the project Trafaria Praia for the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2013; her solo show at the château de Versailles, France (2012); her participation in the group show The World Belongs to You at the Palazzo Grassi / François Pinaud Foundation, Venice (2011); and her first retrospective, held at the Museo Coleção Berardo in Lisbon (2010).
Included in the fee and opening times of the Permanent Collections.
