Joana Vasconcelos

Source: Unravelled
‘Her works attempt to challenge contemporary reality by widening people’s point of view: “I believe that the objective of art is to lead individuals to question the world.”’
Inspired by Louise Bourgeois and Paula Rego.
Taught to crochet as a teenager by grandmother.
Crochet lace used to play a role in the historical isolation of Portuguese women: ‘confined to their homes, unaware of their rightful places in the world of work, they passed on the technique to their daughters, thus perpetuating a suffocating form of oppression that lasted for four decades.
‘The many roles of womanhood – warrior, wife, mother, or housekeeper – are central to Joana’s work, as she reinvents tiles in order to compare and contrast the concepts of domination and submission, femininity and masculinity, strength and fragility’