The Portuguese artist is famous for her monumental ceramic wedding cakes and gigantic chandeliers made of tampons. So why is a new show in Lisbon pairing her with Valentino\u2019s size-zero catwalk dresses?<\/p>\n
To interview the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is to jump on to a moving train. She is telling me why she uses needlework to make huge things: 15-metre doilies, say, or a tree 13.5 metres tall rustling with 150,000 hand-sewn leaves. \u201cOne day, I said to myself,\u201d she says, \u201cwhy not bring domestic detail into monumental sculpture? What do we know of works like this? OK, there\u2019s Louise Bourgeois. But it wasn\u2019t enormous. She worked in detail but on small things. There\u2019s the beauty of Niki de Saint Phalle. But it\u2019s always papier mache \u2013 a technique that\u2019s very simple, very practical, but not chic.\u201d<\/p>\n
It takes a certain something to compare yourself to these two French giantesses of art. It takes something else to castigate Bourgeois and de Saint Phalle for not being big, bold and beautiful enough. But if there\u2019s one female contemporary artist who can do it without coming across as delusional, it\u2019s Vasconcelos. Born in Paris in 1971 into an artistic Portuguese family, Vasconcelos has established herself as one of her country\u2019s leading contemporary artists \u2013 and one of the world\u2019s most ambitious.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/aaba24e57c997e9b000c7e5025d34fa627f80b53\/411_0_3902_3121\/master\/3902.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d1b0d7a154404ede03ec437a5c752716\" "\\"\u2018Enough")
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