Enough of this suffering! Joana Vasconcelos on why she is fed up with womens art defined by pain

The Portuguese artist is famous for her monumental ceramic wedding cakes and gigantic chandeliers made of tampons. So why is a new show in Lisbon pairing her with Valentinos size-zero catwalk dresses?To interview the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is to jump on to a moving train. She is telling me why she uses needlework to make huge things: 15-metre doilies, say, or a tree 13.5 metres tall rustling with 150,000 hand-sewn leaves. One day, I said to myself, she says, why not bring domestic d...