Standfirst: Lisbon’s MAAT is presenting VENUS – Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos, an exhibition pairing the Italian designer’s dresses with sculptures by the Portuguese artist. The show explores the relationship between domestic life, public identity, luxury and haute couture through an immersive journey ending on 22 February.
Art and fashion meet in Lisbon as Portuguese sculptor Joana Vasconcelos reimagines the world of Valentino Garavani through an exhibition at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. Rather than presenting the designer’s creations as a conventional fashion retrospective, the show places them in conversation with Vasconcelos’s colourful, large-scale sculptures and references to everyday domestic life.
VENUS – Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos is being staged as part of MAAT’s 10th-anniversary celebrations. The exhibition brings together selected pieces from Valentino Garavani’s archive with works by Vasconcelos, including new creations made specifically for the project.
A dialogue between haute couture and contemporary art
The exhibition was developed through a partnership between the Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation and Joana Vasconcelos. Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino’s long-time life and business partner, established the foundation connected to the designer’s legacy.
With access to Valentino Garavani’s archive, Vasconcelos selected dresses intended to show the breadth of his work rather than focusing solely on the red gowns most closely associated with the fashion house. Fabrics, embroidery, silhouettes and contrasting textures all contribute to the exhibition’s interpretation of Valentino’s approach to clothing and identity.
For Vasconcelos, the garments represent more than craftsmanship. They also reflect the way fashion can transform how women are perceived in public, turning clothing into a means of creating presence, status and an almost mythical persona.
Valkyrie Venus anchors the Lisbon exhibition
The centrepiece of the exhibition is Valkyrie Venus, a textile sculpture created around the idea of luxury. Its colours and textures draw on the Valentino garments displayed throughout the show, while its scale gives the work a commanding presence inside MAAT.
The sculpture also establishes the exhibition’s central contrast: the difference between private life and public appearance. Vasconcelos presents one world shaped by domestic routines and intimacy, and another in which a woman enters public space wearing a couture creation and takes on the presence of a goddess.
This tension gives the exhibition its distinctive character. The Valentino dresses are associated with rare occasions, ceremony and perfection, while Vasconcelos’s installations bring in familiar objects connected to household work and everyday life.
From ironing boards to couture dresses
One of the exhibition’s most striking environments is the “Ironing Room”. Vasconcelos selected dresses that cannot be ironed and displayed them alongside a composition centred on the household appliance. The arrangement turns a practical domestic object into part of a wider reflection on fashion, care and presentation.
Elsewhere, visitors encounter references to feather dusters, pots, cutlery and other utensils. These objects create an unexpected visual language around the couture garments, placing highly finished clothing beside the tools and rituals of home life.
The result is not a simple opposition between domesticity and glamour. Instead, the exhibition suggests that both spaces can shape identity. The home may be private and unseen, while fashion can make an individual visible, but Vasconcelos links the two through materials, labour, performance and transformation.
MAAT exhibition extends a project first shown in Rome
The Lisbon presentation is an adapted version of a project previously shown at PM23 in Rome, the cultural space founded by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti. That presentation ran until 19 July 2026 before the project moved to Portugal.
At MAAT, the exhibition forms part of a broader programme marking the museum’s first decade. The institution is also presenting three other new exhibitions, placing the Valentino and Vasconcelos collaboration within a wider programme of contemporary art, architecture and design.
MAAT’s setting is particularly suited to a project that crosses artistic disciplines. The museum’s programme brings together visual art, architecture and technology, while VENUS adds fashion and design to that conversation.
Why the exhibition matters
The project offers a different way to view a fashion archive. Instead of treating couture dresses as isolated objects, it asks visitors to consider how garments operate within cultural, social and emotional contexts.
- Fashion as identity: the dresses are presented as objects capable of changing how their wearers are seen.
- Domestic life and public image: household tools are placed beside garments associated with luxury and ceremony.
- Material connection: textiles, embroidery, colour and texture link Valentino’s work with Vasconcelos’s sculptures.
- A cross-disciplinary exhibition: the project connects contemporary art, haute couture, design and museum practice.
For visitors, the exhibition provides an opportunity to see Valentino Garavani’s work through an artist’s perspective rather than through a conventional chronological display. Vasconcelos’s interventions reshape the archive into a visual and physical journey about women, labour, glamour and visibility.
Visiting the exhibition in Lisbon
VENUS – Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos is on view at MAAT in Lisbon until 22 February. The exhibition is part of the museum’s 10th-anniversary programme and is aimed at audiences interested in contemporary art, fashion, design and Portuguese cultural life.
The exhibition’s main takeaway is its deliberate refusal to separate the spectacular from the ordinary. Valentino’s couture dresses represent public glamour, while Vasconcelos’s sculptures bring domestic objects and unseen forms of labour into the same space. Together, they create an expansive portrait of how clothing, art and everyday life can shape one another.
