Exhibitions
Joana Vasconcelos transforms the everyday into an artistic experience at the Picasso Museum Málaga
The work of Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos arrives this summer at the Picasso Museum Málaga with Transfiguration , an ambitious exhibition that can be visited from May 29 to September 27, 2026. The exhibition offers a broad overview of the career of one of the most unique creators on the contemporary European art scene, through thirteen sculptures and installations created from the late nineties to the present.
Curated by Miguel López-Remiro, the museum's artistic director, the exhibition reinforces the Malaga institution's commitment to international collaboration and to presenting projects that broaden the dialogue between contemporary creation and the legacy of Pablo Picasso.
Joana Vasconcelos, Betty Boop (AP), 2020 at the Picasso Museum Malaga.
The central focus of Transfiguration lies in Vasconcelos's ability to transform everyday objects, materials, and symbols into visual and spatial experiences that challenge conventional forms of perception. His works convert the domestic into the monumental, the utilitarian into the ceremonial, and the ornamental into structure, generating a universe where meanings shift without losing the memory of what they once were.
Born in Paris in 1971 and raised in Portugal, Joana Vasconcelos has developed an artistic practice deeply connected to Portuguese material culture. Her work integrates everyday objects, folk references, industrial materials, and artisanal techniques passed down through generations. Through these combinations, the artist constructs a visual language that critically examines contemporary cultural traditions and codes, while simultaneously displaying a remarkable sensory richness.
The exhibition allows visitors to understand how transformation—or transfiguration—constitutes the core of his creative process. Textiles that acquire architectural scale, decorative elements transformed into monumental structures, and everyday objects elevated to the status of critical devices are part of a journey that invites visitors to question established hierarchies between the artisanal and the industrial, the private and the public, the popular and the monumental.
According to Miguel López-Remiro, Vasconcelos's artistic production can be understood as "a set of operations that reorganize our cultural hierarchies." This vision connects with the artist's own reflection on contemporary art as a generator of spaces for interpretation capable of being "physical, mental, conceptual, or spiritual."
Joana Vasconcelos, Carmen, 2001.
The notion of transformation also occupies a prominent place in Vasconcelos's personal experience. The artist recalls the profound impression made on her as a teenager when she first saw Guernica . That visit allowed her to understand that a work of art could convey an emotional and physical experience beyond mere representation. "Looking at the painting, I could feel the war," she reminisces. For her, this capacity to intensify emotion through visual transformation constitutes one of the essential functions of art.
Presented within the context of the Picasso Museum Málaga, the exhibition also acquires a particular symbolic dimension. Without establishing an explicit dialogue with Picasso's work, Transfiguration is part of an artistic tradition that transforms the everyday, the popular, and the vernacular into material for experimentation. It is a common ground where Vasconcelos's work finds resonance with some of the creative principles that marked the career of the Málaga-born artist.
The creator herself recognizes the special nature of this presentation: exhibiting at the Picasso Museum Malaga means, in her words, "entering into a relationship with the energy of Picasso, with his homeland, with his identity and with his Malaga."
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