Art by Joana Vasconcelos

Vasconcelos builds oversized sculptures out of textiles, crochet, and ordinary household objects, most famously A Noiva ("The Bride"), a full-size chandelier constructed from roughly 14,000 tampons, shown at the 2005 Venice Biennale to considerable shock and attention. Born in Paris to Portuguese parents who'd fled the country's dictatorship, she grew up in Portugal after the 1974 revolution that ended it, and has since become one of the country's most internationally recognized living artists: the first woman and youngest artist ever to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles, in 2012, and the first Portuguese artist to get a solo retrospective at the Guggenheim Bilbao, in 2018.