ART COLOGNE 2025

Internationally acclaimed, Joana Vasconcelos explores the boundaries between contemporary art and traditional craft, recontextualizing techniques such as crochet, embroidery, and ceramics within a conceptual and sculptural framework. Her work critically engages with themes of identity, cultural heritage, materiality, and the dynamics between artisanal labor and collective memory. At ART COLOGNE 2025, Baró Galeria will present sculptures from Vasconcelos’ Bestiary series, in which animal forms are enveloped in elaborate crochet produced in collaboration with artisans from Pico Island, in the Azores. Functioning as metaphorical “second skins,” these textile constructions confront notions of transformation, hybridity, and the intersections between nature and culture. In dialogue with these works, her Crochet Paintings expand the artist’s exploration of textile languages through rhythmic compositions that challenge conventional hierarchies of ornament and authorship.

With a career spanning more than two decades, Joana Vasconcelos has exhibited at major international institutions, including the Guggenheim Bilbao, Château de Versailles, and Museu de Serralves, and has participated in the Venice Biennale (2005, 2013). Her work is represented in significant public and private collections worldwide and continues to play a vital role in contemporary debates on material culture and sociopolitical narratives.