At a glance
A Roman love letter to beauty, power and craft — where Valentino’s haute couture meets Joana Vasconcelos’ monumental, feminist, dazzling universe.
Artlovers Tip
Don’t go only for the Valentino dresses.
Look at the hands behind the work: embroidery, crochet, textile surfaces, ornament, repetition, labour. Vasconcelos’ power is that she takes what has often been considered “female craft” and makes it monumental, political and impossible to ignore.
Then continue outside. The citywide installations make Rome part of the exhibition — not just the setting.
Inside the exhibition
Meet the artist
Description
This is not a classic fashion exhibition. It is a dialogue between art, haute couture, craft and the city of Rome.
Joana Vasconcelos creates a non-linear journey through emblematic works and new site-specific pieces inspired by Valentino Garavani’s world. PM23 describes the exhibition as a place where beauty is not static, but a force capable of meaning and transformation.
At the centre is Valkyrie VENUS, a monumental work made through a collective process involving more than 200 participants and over 200 kg of crocheted pieces. Students, artisans, patients, women from shelters, refugees and inmates contributed to the making of the work — turning beauty into something shared, social and alive.
The exhibition also expands into Rome with public installations such as I’ll Be Your Mirror in Piazza Mignanelli, Solitaire at Terrazza del Pincio, and Drag Race at the Ara Pacis.
Worth travelling for?
Because VENUS treats beauty not as luxury, but as a cultural and social language.
Valentino’s legacy is usually read through elegance, discipline, red, fabric, silhouette and perfection. Vasconcelos adds another layer: excess, craft, feminism, popular culture, collective labour and emotional power. The result is not fashion displayed as archive, but fashion reimagined as sculpture, myth and civic gesture.
For Artlovers, this is worth the trip because it sits exactly between art and travel: Rome as stage, Valentino as memory, Vasconcelos as contemporary force, and beauty as something that can still create community.
Experience as an Artlover
Visit time / Density: Medium-density but visually rich. Allow 60–75 minutes for PM23. Add extra time if you want to see the public installations across Rome.
A glamorous but meaningful Rome stop — where beauty is not just something to admire, but something made by many hands, many stories and one powerful idea: art can transform elegance into collective strength.
VENUS Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos
Artlovers relevance
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