Joana Vasconcelos: Mask of mirrors

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is renowned for her large-scale sculptural pieces which have featured in galleries across the world. She has used materials such as fabric, plastic and even tampons to construct her works. In June 2018 her exhibition I’m Your Mirror opened at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. For this Joana made a series of new sculptures, including an enormous Venetian-style mask, made of overlapping mirrors. The construction of the huge mask was a process full of challenges as the enormous structure took shape in Joana’s Lisbon studio. In this programme Anna McNamee follows Joana through the process of working with the mirrors and explores how the piece is designed, shaped and packed up ready to begin its journey to Bilbao.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.7	Welcome to In the Studio from the BBC World Service, the programme that investigates the creative process.
0:13.4	In this edition, we return to 2018 and to the making of a sculpture called I'll Be Your Mirror.
0:20.1	Music to the making of a sculpture called I'll Be Your Mirror.
0:33.6	I'm Anna McNamee, and this week I'm in Portugal's capital city, Lisbon,
0:39.0	visiting the studio of one of the country's most prolific and successful artists ever.
0:40.9	Joanna Dash Conchellos.
0:48.3	The truth is, I really understand how you make things.
0:52.2	And the construction is a very important part of the process.
0:54.8	And you have to be connected with the process,
0:58.2	otherwise you won't be able to do something that was never done before.
1:08.6	Doing things that have never been done before is how Joanna has made her international reputation.
1:11.9	Whether it was her sculpture titled The Bride,
1:15.3	a massive yet elegant chandelier made out of tampons that was the must-see artwork of 2005's Venice Biennale,
1:19.9	or the huge pair of silver stilettos made from saucepans
1:24.0	and the pink feathered helicopter,
1:26.3	which drew record-breaking crowds to her solo exhibition
1:29.4	at France's Palace of Versailles. Joanna's work is always monumental in scale and ambition,
1:37.1	and her solo show, opening at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, promises to be her most
1:43.6	ambitious yet.
1:45.4	It will feature some of the most famous and emblematic works from her career so far,
1:50.5	but there will be new pieces too.
	...

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