Born in 1971, Joana Vasconcelos is a contemporary visual artist renowned for her monumental sculptures, whose 25 years practise stretches to film and drawing. She updates the arts & crafts concept to the 21st century and incorporates everyday objects with irony and humour, creating a bridge between domestic environment and public space while questioning the status of women, consumerism society and collective identity.

International acclaim came at the first Venice Biennale ever curated by women with The Bride in 2005, followed by Trafaria Praia, the first floating pavilion in the biennale representing Portugal in 2013. The youngest artist and the only woman ever at Palace of Versailles, to a record breaking 1.6 million visitors, her 2012 exhibition was the most visited in France in 50 years. In 2018, Vasconcelos became the first Portuguese to exhibit at Guggenheim Bilbao with a major retrospective, which was one of the most visited in the museum’s history and reached 4th place in The Art Newspaper’s annual exhibitions’ Top 10. Beyond, her biggest show so far in the UK, continues at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until January 2022.