As tributes and reflections on the late Valentino Garavani still reverberate, one striking and emotive exhibition tells a world of stories through the eyes of artist Joana Vasconcelos. Entitled Venus and staged at Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti’s art and educational foundation, PM23 in Rome – it is the last exhibition that Garavani conceived before his death in January this year.
Garavani first met Vasconcelos in 2018 visiting her studio in Lisbon. “Valentino had an instinctive and deeply cultivated relationship with art. For him, art was never distant; it was a living presence, a space of dialogue and transformation. His sensitivity extended far beyond fashion: he understood the power of creation as a shared human language, capable of expressing fragility, strength, beauty, and resistance all at once,” says Vasconcelos of the kismet.
Known for her provocative mega-scale installations – often made from everyday objects (tampons, mirrors, pots included) conversations continued with Garavani, inviting the Portuguese artist to offer an interpretation of his archive through her eyes. The upshot, Venus, sees 33 couture outfits in dialogue with 12 artworks that play off the abstract and the intimate, the rigour of couture with explosive soft sculptures. The centrepiece is Valkyrie Venus – a monumental work featuring a host of spectral ceiling-hung female forms created in an intricate patchwork of 3D textiles and illuminated with tiny LED lights. “Valkyrie Venus emerged from an in-depth study of Mr. Valentino’s aesthetic codes – his reverence for line, texture, and expression – reconfigured through scale, abstraction, and craft. Couture maintains an intimate relationship with the body, while my work externalises and amplifies gesture into spatial and symbolic realms. Both are languages of form and presence,” explains Vasconcelos.
The creative confluence is vibrant and expansive. While Valentino gowns are adored for their jewel-like colours, poetic embellishments and serpentine silhouettes, Vasconcelos takes ideas of beauty, gender and identity as her field of exploration. She examines female archetypes such as Marilyn: a site-specific installation created from domestic objects (pans, pots) sculpted into towering heels and flanked by three couture gowns. The exhibition culminates with Garden of Eden, an immersive environment inhabited by mythic women – Cinderella, the Femme Fatale included – who are positioned amongst a series of iconic embellished black dresses in tulle, silk, georgette and lace. Outside the gallery I’ll Be Your Mirror is giant mask fashioned from multiple decorative vanity mirrors acts as entrance and finale.
I'll Be Your Mirror
Vasconcelos does not work in an ivory tower and engages communities to take part in the artistic process. ForValkyrie Venus, she worked with social platforms across Rome, including a woman’s prison, inviting over 200 participants to create crochet panels that weighed in at 200kg and which wrap the 13m long Venus in a ‘second skin.’ “I hope visitors leave with the sense that beauty is generative – capable of provoking thought, fostering empathy, and creating unexpected connections. Seeing art and fashion as complementary ways of engaging with human experience can open broader reflections on identity, craft, and collective life,” she says.
Joana Vasconcelos
When Valentino planned his legacy, PM23, was conceived as a cultural and educational arts space and also a tribute to Rome, the city that spawned Valentino Garavani’s ambition and profound sense of beauty. “The collaboration with Joana Vasconcelos allowed us to explore new languages, weaving together different skills, hands and stories, and to make visible the value of collective work and creativity as tools for empowerment,” said Garavani and partner Giammetti.
The Venus exhibition opens to the public on January 18 at PM23 – Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation. Tickets are available via the PM23 website or at the ticket office in Piazza Mignanelli.