Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti presents VENUS, a major new exhibition by Joana Vasconcelos — VENUS, Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos — opening at PM23, the cultural space envisioned by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti in the heart of Rome, in Piazza Mignanelli. The show was conceived as a dialogue between art, fashion and the city, free from rigid museological frameworks and firmly rooted in the present cultural landscape. Bringing together iconic works and new site-specific creations, the exhibition unfolds as a fluid journey where art and haute couture engage as contemporary languages in dialogue with the city. Renowned for her monumental and highly scenographic installations, Joana Vasconcelos develops at PM23 a fluid, non-linear exhibition journey that brings together emblematic works and new site-specific creations inspired by the universe of Valentino Garavani. 

Created through an ambitious participatory process involving over 200 contributors across Lisbon and Rome — including students, artisans and members of diverse communities — Valkyrie Venus is the pulsating heart of the exhibition. The work transforms the idea of the garment into sculpture and fashion into a visual and symbolic gesture. All this converges in a single, collective artistic gesture, a powerful symbol of the transmission of know-how and tradition, transformed into a vehicle for empowerment and emancipation, shared care, and individual and collective resistance: art as an agent of change, a tool for re-signification, education and solidarity.  

Extending beyond PM23, the exhibition resonates throughout the city via a constellation of public installations: I’ll Be Your Mirror at Piazza Mignanelli, Solitaire at Terrazza del Pincio,and Drag Race at the Ara Pacis, establishing an ongoing dialogue between contemporary art, architecture and the urban landscape.