The largest installation in ARoS’s permanent collection to date, Valkyrie Ránby the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, moves in when the museum presents her solo exhibition in autumn 2016. The New Carlsberg Foundation has contributed with funds to purchase the installation, which will be included in the permanent collection after the exhibition. The colourful and imposing 50-metre-long textile installation will be hung by the entrance and wind its way through the entrance hall.
Feminist craft
Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971) is known for addressing topics such as gender, identity and consumer culture from a feminist perspective. The piece Valkyrie Rán is part of her ‘Valkyrie series’, which features large, colourful, site-specific installations sewn from hundreds of metres of fabric combined with fringe, tassels, pompons etc.
All the works in the Valkyrie series are hand-crafted by textile experts in the artist’s studio in Lisbon. The collective process behind the creation of Valkyrie Rán thus consciously addresses the sociocultural history of the textile craft, which was once associated exclusively with femininity and the private sphere of the home.
‘Faced with the lack of recognition in the public realm, women found an outlet in domestic pursuits. Paradoxically, textile crafts played an important role in women’s liberation. Vasconcelos combines this retrospective historical perspective with a critical look at the contemporary situation, where the dedication of time and reflection in the effort to shape our surroundings has long since been superseded by industrial mass production,’ says Erlend G. Høyersten, director of ARoS.
The Nordic Valkyrie
In Norse mythology, the female Valkyries were associated with war and death, because they controlled men’s fate and decided which warriors would die in battle to spend their afterlife with the gods in Valhalla. Since the European Romantic period, Valkyries have also been a popular symbol and motif in art.
‘Since the Valkyrie series draws it motif and its inspiration from Norse mythology, both Vasconcelos and ARoS wanted to bring the series to a climax by creating a “Nordic Valkyrie” for the museum, where the inherent narrative of the work can enhance our understanding of past and present social patterns,’ Erlend G. Høyersten explains.