One of the brightest stars of contemporary art, Joana Vasconcelos, continues her collaboration with the furniture industry. Caramel shades and feminine shapes characterize her BomBom Outdoor collection, created for the French brand Roche Bobois, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.
Feminist artist Joana Vasconcelos, able to convey powerful messages and easily recognizable for her exuberant aesthetic and special Portuguese temperament towards color, gained international fame after participating in the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Redefining the language of the arts and crafts for the 21st century, Vasconcelos works with pressing themes of social consumption, collective identity, and the status of women in the modern world. Her circle of attention includes everyday objects, which she, not without a certain amount of irony and humor, “improves”, makes more decorative, sickly beautiful, and deliberately cozy.
The number of visitors that her solo exhibition attracted at the famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is still considered a record, in addition, she became the only woman awarded the honor of having an exhibition in the halls of the Palace of Versailles, and most recently one of her “Valkyries” – a monumental sculpture, assembled from crocheted fragments, fringe, lace, all kinds of souvenir decorations, sequins and LEDs, graced the catwalk during the Dior collection show at Paris Fashion Week.
This is not the first time Joana Vasconcelos has collaborated with Roche Bobois (the debut in 2019 was a re-interpretation of the famous Mah Jong sofa, to which the artist added multi-colored crocheted sculptural pillows).
“The feeling of comfort is different for each person: for some, it is comfortable to stand, for others to lie with your legs up,” says Vasconcelos. “This was of particular interest to me in my work.” Find the relationship between the object and the human body as sculpture and how the human figure takes the form of the object. For me, this collection in collaboration with Roche Bobois represents the perfect union between art, design, and life.”
The BomBom collection consists of outdoor sofas, rugs, and cushions in organic shapes. The sofas have different configurations and can be customized in color and shape. Several interchangeable back cushion options also add endless variety to the collection’s possible combinations. The color scheme is inspired, according to the artist herself, by the sun-drenched facades of old Lisbon houses, and the combinations can be freely varied, since they are specially selected to harmoniously complement each other in any combination. The idea for the name also belongs to Vasconcelos: BomBom is associated with childhood, play, and freedom.