The Serralves Library presents the launch of the book “Vera Mota – Performing Matters, flesh hues, skeletal forms”, with the participation of the artist and author Vera Mota, Philippe Vergne, Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, and curator Filipa Loureiro.

The session proposes a conversation around the publication and the artist’s career, exploring the themes and processes that have shaped the development of her work.

With an ongoing relationship with the Serralves Foundation — where she has presented her work in various exhibition and performance contexts — Vera Mota contributes to the institution’s continuing dialogue on performance and sculpture.

Performing Matters, flesh hues, skeletal forms is the first monograph dedicated to Vera Mota, offering a comprehensive overview of the last decade of her artistic practice. Her work explores the physical, tactile, and conceptual possibilities of different material bodies — including her own. The body is positioned as an indispensable agent, both medium and subject, leaving traces of its gestures and movements while amplifying the voice of other materials. Moving between sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance, Vera Mota examines how the body acts, functions, or is represented, questioning the possibilities of an economy of presence.

As Philippe Vergne writes, Vera Mota’s diagrammatic work stages the displacement and dismemberment of bodies under attack or subjected to self-dismantling, unable to remain whole. It could be the human body, the physical body. It could also be the small societies the artist organises within her installations and exhibitions, pointing to community bodies, social bodies, political bodies, democratic bodies, and migratory bodies of all kinds — all bodies that continue to be dismantled if they fail to conform.

Featuring a foreword by Merle Radtke, essays by Philippe Vergne and André Barata, and a conversation with Barbara Piwowarska, this book offers a vital introduction to the artistic practice of Vera Mota.

This publication was supported by the Portuguese Republic – Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts.