Venus. Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos

The new exhibition presented by the Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation at the PM23 exhibition space in Piazza Mignanelli, next to Piazza di Spagna, is dedicated to Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, renowned for her monumental and highly scenographic installations that blend contemporary art, craftsmanship and social messages.

The fluid, non-linear exhibition itinerary brings together representative works by Joana Vasconcelos with surprising new site-specific pieces inspired by Valentino Garavani’s legacy. Through abstraction, the artist reinterprets clothes, shapes and visions, constructing a body of work that celebrates and dialogues with the creative legacy of the “last emperor of fashion”, founder of the eponymous fashion house that symbolises Italian elegance, in a continuous play of references.

The focus of the exhibition is VENUS, a Valkyrie from Norse mythology revisited in a contemporary key. It is a monumental work that intertwines thousands of decorative elements giving life to a contemporary and abstract heroine, an expression of a powerful and collaborative artisanal intelligence, the transmission of know-how and tradition, redemption and social vitality, shared care and individual and collective resistance. The work that gives the entire exhibition its title is in fact the result of an impressive participatory art project and was created by hundreds of hands. These include fashion students at academies, young patients at the Bambino Gesù Hospital and terminally ill patients at the Gemelli Medical Centre, women victims of violence, female refugees and inmates at the Rebibbia Prison.

With this project, PM23 stands as a living testament to the belief that beauty is not only to be contemplated, but to be shared: a place where art and fashion meet to generate culture, inspire dialogue, and open new horizons for collective vision.