Joana Vasconcelos: ‘Complete freedom keeps the world alive’
She shocked the world by creating a 20- foot- high chandelier using 25,000 tampons and named it “The Bride” for the 2005 edition of Venice Biennale.Now she shocks us again — rather, enlightens our minds — by creating a maze of lights in the dark at the Venice Biennale 2015.
In person, Joana Vasconcelos is hardly the type who looks like she enjoys attention elicited in a risqué manner, even if her tampon chandelier was once branded by a critic as “a sexual work.” Demure and charming with her simply smart black dress and long hair, Joana smiles and shows me her gold filigree pendant which, she explains, matches the Swatch she designed. “It blends traditional design reflective of my country, Portugal, with the contemporary vibe of Swatch.”
There is nothing sexual about the Swatch Pavilion which she named ‘ Giardino dell’ Eden” located at the Giardini district in Venice Biennale together with 30 historic national pavilions. “For an artist, a project always starts with a dream, and it is not always easy to make it happen. I have always wanted to have the Garden of Eden in its own pavilion. Thanks to Swatch, this is now a reality.”
As you enter the silver pavilion, there is pitch black darkness. Then you hear the cacophony of crickets and the occasional croaking of toads in a symphony as you find your way through the labyrinthine garden where flowers light up one after another, and you don’t know if these lights are chasing you or you are chasing them. The experience is magical, and you know that a lot of creativity and high-tech details went into the making of this garden.
“It represents nature in an artificial way using technology, but at the same time, I wanted to keep it poetic,” Joana says of her garden.
“Art is the need to represent ourselves in complete freedom, to keep the world alive,” she says. Joana cherishes freedom all too well. It was the need for freedom that drove her parents to flee from the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and seek refuge in Paris where she was born. Nurtured in freedom, Joana says: “I am the result of a time, of identities, of a change in the way we look at the world.” And hear this, men: “Women can do many things at the same time; men cannot.”
Joana says she hasn’t visited the Philippines. “But who knows? Maybe in the future, you will see me again. I met a Filipino tycoon in Hong Kong who invited me to do a collaboration for one of his real estate projects. His name? Joey Antonio.”
But meanwhile, if you want to experience the amazing garden of Joana Vasconcelos, visit the Swatch Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2015 which is ongoing until Nov. 22, 2015.