The exhibition “Plug-In”, by artist Joana Vasconcelos, which brings together new works such as the “Tree of Life”, has already received more than 260,000 visits at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, where it has been open for six months, the organization announced today.
The exhibition – which will close on April 8 and on April 6 will have a special program of visits, talks with the artist, dance performances and yoga and meditation sessions for the public – is spread between the MAAT Central and MAAT Gallery spaces.
A 13-meter-high tree-shaped structure representing the emotions experienced during the 2020 pandemic was placed at MAAT Central. It was initially planned for Villa Borghese in Rome, but never came to fruition due to the lockdown.
The work, filled with hundreds of embroidered leaves, was conceived for the Temporada Cruzada between Portugal and France, presented first in a chapel on the outskirts of Paris and made its debut in Portugal at MAAT.
“Plug-in” extends to the MAAT Gallery space, where there are seven works in total: “Drag Race” (2023), which establishes a dialog with “War Games” (2011), two conventional vehicles transformed into works of art, the first decorated with gilded carvings and feathers, and the second covered with toy rifles and stuffed toys.
In the oval gallery of the new building was installed the gigantic tentacular textile sculpture “Valkyrie Octopus”, created in 2015 for MGM Macau.
Two pieces that were exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain are also on show for the first time in Lisbon: the mirror mask with the title “I’ll Be Your Mirror” (2019) and the gigantic ring “Solitaire” (2018), both placed outside MAAT.
Joana Vasconcelos, the first artist to win the EDP Foundation New Artists Award in 2000, was born in Paris in 1971 to Portuguese parents and was the first woman artist to be invited to create an exhibition for the Palace of Versailles in 2012.
He began holding exhibitions in the 1990s and his work was internationally recognized in 2005, when he took part in the Venice Biennale with the piece “The Bride”, a monumental chandelier made up of tampons for female intimate hygiene.
In 2010, he presented the anthological exhibition “Sem Rede” at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, and his work has been shown in museums all over the world.