photography Archives

Joana Vasconcelos at Palace of Versailles

I’m on a bit of vacation in sunny Singapore, so my apologies for the light posting this week! I’ll let Deborah take over today as she gives you a glimpse of Joana Vasconcelos’ exhibition at the Palace of Versailles! ~ Amy

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This is THE most glamorous exhibition I’ve ever seen! Joana Vasconcelos, a portuguese artist born in France, installed art in the middle of history. And I’m pretty sure this is not an easy task.

Coração independente vermelho

Using “every day life” materials, she proposed art that could only exist for this place, they were linked to Versailles in a timeless way. It’s like they fit with everything that happened there.

Marilyn

Le Dauphin et La Dauphine

When I stroll through the rooms of the Palace and its Gardens, I feel the energy of a setting that gravitates between reality and dreams, the everyday and magic, the festive and the tragic. I can still hear the echo of the footsteps of Marie-Antoinette, and the music and festive ambiance of the stately rooms. How would the life of Versailles look if this exuberant and grandiose universe was transferred to our period?

Golden Valkyrie

Lilicoptère

I loved the fact that you would never stop feeling submersed in the world of the palace when you look at her work in the middle of it. To the contrary, they add an interesting modern feeling that is quite unique and magic. I’m really thankful for having the opportunity of seeing this with my own eyes 🙂

Valquíria Enxoval

And for my favorite piece, the Valquíria Enxoval, there’s a video that you can watch below:

All the information about the exhibition can be found here. I really hope you can visit too!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah is known in Brazil as Tartaruga Feliz (Happy Turtle). She’s a self-taught illustrator and animator who is born in Brazil. She travels the world while working, and attributes it to the best experience she has had in her life so far. You can see more of her work on her website, and she just launched a new website, Garatujas Fantásticas with 3 of her friends that has exclusive content for kids in Brazil!

A lightness in the air

The writer Italo Calvino believed that knowledge was in literature. On his book “‪Six Memos for the Next Millennium‬” he wrote beautifully about the values that he believed to be important to transmit to the generation of the year 2000.

Lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency. The first of these values resulted on the exhibition “Havia um ar de leveza” (There was an air of lightness in portuguese), with Suzzana Magalhães as curator.

I invited Joana Zimmermann to partner with me. We created a piece called “Play me, I’m yours” that makes it clear to be interactive. The spectators are transformed into participants, sitting on the swing and giving life to the piece. When you move, the movement also gives balance to the other swing on the side, where is Minos, our guardian.

On the video below you can see how fun it is to interact with it!

Who sits and starts to swing, immediately realizes that its inserted in a kind of a fabled scene, with cellophane clouds above their heads, a tribute to Perseu and also to Brasília, the city where the exhibition is taking place! 🙂

We are proposing the physical lightness, the subtraction of the weight, that needs movement to exist.

The exhibition is free and its open to the public on the Cultural Center of the Aliance Française at Brasília (Brazil) until the 3rd of August.

If you manage to go, take a picture with Minos and send to us please! 😀

Yayoi Kusama: last days of exhibition in London

Hallucination: that’s what Yayoi Kusama’s work is all about. The best-know living artist from Japan who influenced people like Andy Warhol, made me and my friends get more and more interested in her as we were entering the rooms and her universe that is so unique and somewhat very bizarre.

It’s a must visit if you’re in London right now. You’ll experience and feel things that goes from uncomforted dizziness to complete amazedness.

I’ll never forget the “Infinited Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life” where you enter in a room of mirrors and its filled with these very small lamps that shines with different colors at different timing and makes you feel like you’re in an infinite world, that you can walk and look at yourself for your whole life never arriving at the end of anything. There’s a video where you can see what I’m talking about: