Giant high-heel shoe of pots and lids (August 6 2012) Giant high-heel shoe of pots and lids (August 6 2012)

Joana Vasconcelos the 41 year old Portuguese-French artist renowned for her appropriations, de-contextualisation and subversion of pre-existent objects and everyday realities. Vasconcelos’ work has been critiqued by Patricia Vieira & Michael Marder in an Aljazeera article, where her piece titled ‘Dorothy’ is described as a “giant high-heel shoe is created by putting together aluminium pots and lids of various sizes. …Dorothy juxtaposes the most recognisable markers of the stereotypical private and public female roles: the pots symbolise housekeeping duties and the high-heel shoe stands for the glamorous image of a seductress. The artist and her work become channels for the communication among disparate things that did not previously belong to the same spatial and temporal constellation. The pots and the shoe speak to one another, and what they relate to us in their thingly language is the material underside of women’s oppression. In Dorothy, Vasconcelos stages an encounter not only between things drawn from two different spheres of everyday life but also between a given thing and a seemingly incongruous milieu. This is accomplished both by changing the dimensions of a normal shoe and by placing the giant shoe in an unexpected setting: a garden or a hall of Versailles.” Vasconcelos’ sculptures and installations, as well as performances and video or photographic records, reveal an acute sense of scale and mastery of colour, while combining in the materialization of concepts that challenge the prearranged routines of daily life.

 

Inspired by Patricia Vieira & Michael Marder ow.ly/czsIV image source Facebook ow.ly/cExiI