Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR is presented the first solo exhibition ever in a museum in Germany of works by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos. 

20 Objects and installations created over the past 20 years will be displayed that provide comprehensive insights into Joana Vasconcelos’ manner of working. The artist, who lives and works in Lisbon, is well known for her large spatial works, with which she humorously and allusively probes the boundaries between the traditional and the modern, high culture and everyday culture, artisan craftwork and industrial production. She first attracted international attention at the Venice Biennale in 2005 with her work The Bride (A Noiva), a monumental chandelier created from thousands of tampons. In 2012, she became the first woman artist to be invited for a solo exhibition at Versailles Palace.
In her large-format works, Joana Vasconcelos often uses everyday objects, which she alienates and reinterprets, combining them to an idiosyncratic kind of surreal object art. In doing so, she also makes use of materials such as tiles, ceramics or fabrics, employing traditional handicraft techniques, for example, crocheting, sewing, and knitting. This is how at her studio her so-called Valkyries come about, bizarre, voluminous beings made of fabric, who take hold of their environment to great effect. In doing so, her works deal with issues of cultural identity and gender roles and reveal points of contact to artistic strategies that also inspired Max Ernst and the Surrealists.

Frequently, the artist takes up the iconic symbols of traditional folk art, such as in her installation Red Independent Heart, an oversized object made of plastic cutlery and accompanied with Fado-music. Another exhibition highlight is the work Carmen Miranda, a high heel 3 meters tall made of welded steel pans and lids, which enters into an exciting dialogue with Max Ernst’s large sculpture Capricorn in the permanent collection in the so-called dance hall of the Museum.