Two weeks after Portugal made global news for running solely off renewables for a remarkable 107 hours, the country unveils a ‘tribute to renewable energy’ – vying for the status of tallest contemporary art project in the world.
In a gesture of national pride, two of the country’s most internationally visible artists, Joana Vasconcelos and Vhils, were commissioned to take on a pair of 100m-high wind turbines. In the midst of the Douro Sul wind farm in the mountainous Moimenta da Beira region now stand two contemporary totem poles, with wild wolves and a handful of local villagers the artworks’ primary audience.
Hatched as an optimistic flight of fancy barely a year ago, Âncora Wind’s privately-funded project sees the two artists adapt their signature motifs to the challenge, and canvas, of technological infrastructure.
In a rare transposition of his practice from an urban to rural context, street artist Vhils – renowned for carving city walls into monumental portraits of anonymous figures – wraps his turbine in a graphic extrapolation of nature’s textures and a surveying human eye.
Vasconcelos’ Gone With the Wind offers a celebratory mélange of folk-inspired iconography, whose central heart faces the small nearby community. 'It’s so different from all the scales you are used to,' explains Vasconcelos, previously the subject of a 2012 exhibition in the rather different context of Versailles. 'I went there last week and thought, "What is this?!" But it’s so energising when you do something that you’re not expecting to see happen.'
As Portugal plots its path towards a sustainable future, the one-off WindArt project offers a cultural point of punctuation; a decoration, and declaration, of ecological and economic ambition.
Hatched as an optimistic flight of fancy barely a year ago, Âncora Wind’s privately-funded project sees the two artists adapt their signature motifs to the challenge, and canvas, of technological infrastructure
Vasconcelos’ Gone With the Wind offers a celebratory mélange of folk-inspired iconography, whose central heart faces the small nearby community
Street artist Vhils – renowned for carving city walls into monumental portraits of anonymous figures – wraps his turbine in a graphic extrapolation of nature’s textures and a surveying human eye
As Portugal plots its path towards a sustainable future, the one-off WindArt project offers a cultural point of punctuation
INFORMATION
Photography courtesy WindArt
-
The bespoke Jaguar E-Type GTO melds elements from every era of the classic sports carECD Automotive Design’s one-off commission caters to a client who wanted to combine the greatest hits of Jaguar’s E-Type along with modern conveniences and more power
-
Casa Sanlorenzo debuts in Venice as a new hub for contemporary artThe luxury yachting leader unveils a stunning new space in a palazzo restored by Piero Lissoni – where art, innovation, and sustainability come together
-
Once vacant, London's grand department stores are getting a new lease on lifeThanks to imaginative redevelopment, these historic landmarks are being rebonr as residences, offices, gyms and restaurants. Here's what's behind the trend
-
Real or imaginary? Step inside the alternate world of Jeff Wall's photographsJeff Wall's major show at MAAT in Portugal dives into four decades of the photographer's career
-
Photographers on the defining events of our time‘The Horizon is Moving Nearer’, at the Portuguese Centre of Photography, uses different forms of media to evalute key issues of the age
-
Guggenheim Bilbao offers new perspectives on Gerhard Richter’s seascapes -
A former farm turns boutique art retreat in rural Alentejo
