T List: A 40-Foot Wedding Cake in the English Countryside

The Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is known for her ambitious oversize sculptures that frequently elevate everyday objects. Her 2005 Venice Biennale contribution, “A Noiva” (The Bride), was a chandelier made of 14,000 tampons and “Valkyrie Miss Dior,” the imposing, tentacular fabric-wrapped installation that formed the backdrop of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s fall ’23 show for Dior, took over the show space at Paris’s Jardin des Tuileries. Vasconcelos’s newest project is her most ambitious yet: “Wedding Cake,” an almost 40-foot-high three-tiered wedding cake pavilion in pastel shades of pink, green and blue, was installed this spring on the grounds of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, England. The whimsical creation is clad in 25,000 ceramic tiles (manufactured in Vasconcelos’s native Lisbon) and adorned with ceramic cherubs, dolphins and a water feature. Commissioned by the collector and arts philanthropist Lord Jacob Rothschild, the “impossible project,” as the artist describes it, has been five years in the making and is the culmination of Vasconcelos’s long-held fascination with the dynamics of weddings: “Weddings are the most important moment in some women’s lives,” she says. “It’s the transition from one identity to another. All transition moments are marked by symbols. This is my way of working through these symbols and asking if they still make sense.” “Wedding Cake” opens June 18, waddesdon.org.uk.