“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
“Ensayo de Fatiga”, solo exhibition by Vera Mota, L21 Barcelona, 2023.
Untitled #1, 2023
Brass
80 x 94 x 4 cm
Untitled #2, 2023
Brass
81 x 92 x 4 cm
Untitled #3, 2023
Brass
94 x 101 x 4 cm
Untitled #4,, 2023
Brass
127 x 91 x 4 cm
Untitled #5, 2023
Plexiglass and aluminium
90 x 65 x 4 cm
Crystalline lattice, 2023
Plexiglass and brass
152 x 27 x 3.5 cm
Accept, adapt 1, 2019
Oil on canvas
183 x 122 x 4 cm
Accept, adapt 2, 2019
Oil on canvas
183 x 122 x 4 cm
Fatigue testing aims to measure the strength of materials. It is typically conducted in controlled environments by subjecting a specific material to cyclic loads to observe its response, behavior, and to determine if and when it reaches the point of rupture. This test allows us to ascertain the material’s expected lifespan and study its strength, identifying the critical breaking point beyond which there is no return.
In her latest exhibition, Portuguese artist Vera Mota draws a series of interesting parallels between the fatigue of materials and the fatigue of the body that handles them. Her studio is also a kind of continuous test in which the materials for her sculptures and herself are subject to constant change, friction, reconfiguration and movement. While fatigue testing on materials follows standardized procedures with well-defined tests, measuring fatigue in the human body poses unique challenges. How does one gauge the internal organ frictions? How do resistance and critical breaking values translate into the organism?
The new works comprising this exhibition attempt to address these questions through a series of plastic fictions and poetic speculations, aiming to explore the limits of the body and imagine its various possibilities and evolutions. To achieve this, the artist has employed industrial materials and processes, such as plexiglass forming a crystalline lattice[1] or brass sheets composing her eponymous series. These wall pieces showcase a contrast between rounded, organic forms and the reflective golden material. The body continually encounters the industrial in these new works, blending originality with the idea of serial repetition and patterns found in nature. These encounters bring us closer to the notion of a posthuman aesthetic, as expressed by Bourriaud:
“We must add to all speculations about human aesthetics the dams constructed by beavers, the pollination of bees, or the abstraction of butterflies… If the latter organically compose forms on their wings, while humans externalize and project forms in front of them, isn’t it just a difference in means?”[2]
Similarly, the exhibition journey features organic accumulations reminiscent of tattered fabrics or viscera undergoing friction. In this series of proposals for hybrid and fictional organs, the forms evoke a liver, lung, pelvis, but also the outline of a leaf or a cluster of fungi. While Deleuze and Guattari speculated on the concept of a body without organs, Vera Mota experiments with a profusion of them to grasp the idea of a transforming body, but where is it headed?
In the same way, as we walk through the exhibition, we find organic accumulations reminiscent of shredded tissues or viscera undergoing friction. In this series of proposals for hybrid and fictional organs, the forms evoke a liver, lung, pelvis, but also the outline of a leaf or a cluster of fungi. While Deleuze and Guattari speculated on the concept of a body without organs, Vera Mota experiments with a profusion of them to grasp the idea of a transforming body, but where is it headed?
Returning to the study of materials, the exhibition’s starting point, according to the mechanics of deformable solids, we can speak of two types of transformations: elastic, where the material returns to its original form upon removing the applied load, and plastic, which is permanent and irreversible. Isn’t the history of the body itself one of irreversible plastic transformations? Finally, the body can also be understood as just another material in the artistic creation process. In this sense, the performance practice that the artist has developed in her career opens the door to that interpretation: the body as a material that is used, experienced, as a reality subjected to different loads and efforts, transforming, fatiguing, and perhaps reinventing itself, always changing form.
Esmeralda Gómez Galera.
[1] The title of this work refers to the characteristic structure of solid materials.
[2] Bourriaud, Nicolas. Inclusions: Aesthetics of the Capitalocene. Pages. 19-20. (Translated from the Spanish edition)
EN / ES
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
From within the midst of things, solo exhibition by Vera Mota. Installation view at L21 Gallery, 2022.
VERA MOTA
Untitled, 2021
Oil on paper, framed in aluminum
61.5 x 43.5 cm
VERA MOTA
Untitled, 2021
Oil on paper, framed in aluminum
61.5 x 43.5 cm
VERA MOTA
Untitled, 2021
Oil on paper, framed in aluminum
61.5 x 43.5 cm
VERA MOTA
Dobra-Rasgo, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
196 x 120 cm
VERA MOTA
Curve, 2021
Aluminum
136 x 29 x 2.5 cm
VERA MOTA
Scraper, 2022
Carrara marble
112.5 x 18 x 9.2 cm
VERA MOTA
Head rester, 2022
Marble and brass
120 x 55 x 19 cm
VERA MOTA
Stance, 2022
Iron
150 x 110 x 36 cm
Bodies touching bodies
If one lies down on one’s side, then one’s head ends up a few centimetres above the surface one is lying on, a distance equal to the breadth of one’s shoulder. We usually use a pillow to bridge this gap, but the ancient Egyptians used a headrest. An object consisted of a semicircular upper section placed under the skull, just above the ear, and one or more columns raising the upper part to the right height. Its use not only ensured a relatively comfortable position while sleeping, but also enabled air to circulate around the head, an added advantage in a warm climate like that of Egypt, as well as protecting the head from insects that could potentially damage this precious body part. I was not surprised when Vera Mota mentioned the trigger provoked by a headrest in the studio of Minimalist artist Donald Judd in Manhattan. The observation of this object made her reconsider where to place the head, and how its symbolic privilege is challenged in its dis/re/placement, wether it’s being lifted or brought down to the feet, as she suggested in previous works.
An echo of a headrest is encountered in Mota’s exhibition made in green marble and placed on top of a brass sheet which has been carved with a shape that reminds of an animal’s skeleton, and which it is actually the shape of a pair of eyebrows used for training in the cosmetic industry. The body is a continuos reference in her exhibition: a performative body in which the thing that matters is precisely matter. Her artistic language challenges the idea of it as passive and immutable, at the same time than expands the notion of the human body by representing parts such as nails, alongside prosthetic elements that serve the purpose of holding it. Offering an account of the materialization of all bodies – human and nonhuman – establishes a situation where agency is granted to our fleshy beings as much as to the matter around us which holds a vibrant vitality defined as “Thing-Power” by Jane Bennett1. Drawing and movement are intimately linked to the gesture that creates the works, the body’s expression and the graphic tracing is almost present in every piece of the exhibition where correlation and repetition create a flow joining them.
“From within the midst of things has the scratched surface of the canvas, irregular as a result of gestures by one given body and time; it has a marble pointing sculpture that resembles a nail; it has scratches again on the brass this time as a result of a mechanic process repeated rigorously, while the curves and colour of the headrest send us back to the waves and folds in the painting where the fragile curving lines take us to the rigid and still bouncing blades of iron from the sculpture Stance.”2
The works propagate shapes and directions in space summoning forms that upend perception and stimulate a kind of imagination where representation is disturbed while we are being moved by matter. Lines dominate the work, notably through the force and importance of horizontality and verticality. As some action is permanently crystallized through the materiality of the works, it seems natural to bring in Tim Ingold’s Lines: A Brief History (2007), a book which begins with this question, “What do walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling, drawing and writing have in common? The answer is that they all proceed along lines of one kind or another.”
Mota’s way of seeing form drags us to the realm of things, the contained pure, the ground of undifferentiated elements suggesting a lack of hierarchy between the material and that which it represents. Her practice reminds us that artworks are not autonomous entities that exist in themselves or whose content is containable. On the contrary, in their exhibition ecosystem they generate a series of conceptual and spatial relationships between themselves and the person who relates to them. Art objects are not as static as they appear to be, nor is the viewer the sole possessor of agency in this relationship.
1. A concept developed in the essay “The force of things. Steps towards an Ecology of Matter”, 2011
2. As described by the artist.
Cristina Ramos
EN / ES
Vera Mota (Porto, 1982) has a degree in Visual Arts – Sculpture (2000- 2005) and a Master in Contemporary Artistic Practices (2006-2008), by the Faculty of Fine Arts U.P., having completed the course of Research and Choreographic Creation at Fórum Dança (2005-2006).
Her works and performances have been presented in relevant institutions such as Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves; Galeria Municipal do Porto; MACE – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas; Matadero (Madrid, Spain); the Irish Biennial (Limerick, Ireland) and SESC (São Paulo, Brazil); among others.
EDUCATION
2006/2008 — Master on Contemporary Artistic Practises,
Faculdade de Belas Artes, Porto University (PT)
2005/2006 — Dance and choreographic composition studies,
Fórum Dança, Lisbon/Porto (PT)
2005 — Graduated in Fine Arts – Sculpture, Faculdade de Belas Artes, Porto University (PT)
SOLO SHOWS
2022
Disembodied, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto (PT)
From within the midst of things. L21 Gallery, Palma, Spain (ES)
Pé-sombra. Capela da Boa Viagem, Funchal, Madeira (PT)
2021
Ventriloquism. Bruno Murias Gallery, Lisbon (PT)
2020
Floating Bones. (Desenho como pensamento. Curated by Alexandre Baptista.) Salão de Chá, Águeda (PT)
2019
SOLID EMOTIONS, Espaço 220m2, Porto (PT)
2018
Heads. (Curated by Matt Packer.) EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art (IE)
Levar a cabeça aos pés, Pedro Cera Gallery, Lisbon.
Músculo, Pedro Oliveira Gallery, Porto (PT)
2015
Mergulho, Pedro Cera Gallery, Lisbon.
DIAGRAMA, Pedro Oliveira Gallery, Porto (PT)
2014
ÁREA, Faculdade de Belas Artes Museum, UP, Porto (PT)
Queda/ fractura, Laboratório das Artes, Guimarães (PT)
2012
SCHEMA, Appleton Square, Lisbon (PT)
a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h.i.j.k.l.m.n.o.p.q.r.s.t.u.v.w.x.y.z , Pedro Oliveira Gallery, Porto (PT)
2011
Acontecimento V, Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon (PT)
Acontecimento III, Espaço Campanhã, Porto (PT)
2008
[kri :s], Fernando Santos Gallery, Porto (PT)
2007
Ver a, MCO Arte Contemporânea Gallery, Porto (PT)
2004
Verso di me, V. Guidi Gallery, Academia de Belle Arti de Bolonha (IT)
GROUP SHOWS
2023
CA’N BOOM!. L21 Gallery and Ca’n Marquès, Palma (ES)
Entre Cajas. L21 Home, Palma (ES)
ARCO 23. L21 Gallery, Madrid (ES)
2022
ART ANTWERP. L21 Gallery, Antwerp (BEL)
2021
The body borrows a revolver. (Curated by Sismografo) Casa das Artes, Porto (PT)
Acting on behalf of thinking. (Curated by Katy Morrison) Pink Gallery, Manchester (UK)
From head to toe. L21 Gallery, Mallorca (ES)
Irradiaçao Vieira, (Curated by Miguel Von Hafe Perez) Arpad-Szenes – Vieira da Silva Museum, Lisbon (PT)
2020
Fuck up Morgana, O Canteiro, Porto (PT)
Intervalo, Bruno Múrias Gallery, Lisbon (PT)
2018
Guerra como modo de ver. (Curated by Ana Cristina Cachola.) MACE, Elvas (PT)
Ver as vozes dos artistas. (Curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez.) Metro, Porto. (PT)
Variations portugaises, Centre D’Art Contemporain, Meymac, França (FR)
2017
10000 anos depois entre Vénus e Marte. (Curated by João Laia.) Passos Manuel, Porto (PT)
Message in a bottle. (Curated by Diana Marincu.) Walk & Talk Gallery, São Miguel, Azores (PT)
Variação nº2. (Curated by Luís Albuquerque and Luís Pinto Nunes.) Galeria Vertical, Porto (PT)
Residentes em trânsito. (Curated by Filipa Oliveira.) Fórum Engénio de Almeida, Évora (PT)
2016
Humidifique-se. (Curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez.) Bregas, Lisbon (PT)
2015
Território de trabalho, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães (PT)
2014
Una línea es un punto que fue a darse una vuelta, Paul Klee. (Curated by Cristina Ramos González.) Passatge, Barcelona, (ES)
Aires del oeste, RO Proyectos, Madrid (ES)
Sem quartel (Curated by Óscar Faria.) Sismógrafo, Porto (PT)
Do barroco para o barroco – está a arte contemporânea. (Curated by Lourenço Egreja and Fátima Lambert.) Casa Museu Guerra Junqueiro, Porto (PT)
2013
Apesar de tudo, ainda se fodia. (Curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez.) Maus Hábitos, Porto.
Constroem o vento. (Curated by José Maia.) Mira, Porto (PT)
2010
AMIW, Novas Cartas Portuguesas (Curated by Carla Cruz.) Casa da Esquina, Coimbra (PT)
2009
Está a morrer e não quer ver. (Curated by José Maia.) Espaço Campanhã, Porto (PT)
2008
FIAV.08, Nimes, France (FR)
PERFORMANCE
2018
Curva Contínua. Museu como Performance, Museu de Arte contemporânea de Serralves, Porto (PT)
Head. EVA International — Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick, Irlanda (IE)
2016
Músculo. Rua das Gaivotas 6, Lisbon (PT)
Mergulho. Pedro Cera Gallery, Lisbon (PT)
2015
Acção elementar (Colecção António Albertino, group show curated by Delfim Sardo.) Coimbra (PT)
Sistema, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães (PT)
Piano Tuning A 440Hz (Sub 40, curated by José Maia.) Almeida Garrett Municipal Gallery, Porto (PT)
2014
Queda / Fractura, (Sub 40, group show curated by José Maia.) Almeida Garrett Municipal Gallery, Porto (PT)
MODULAR. With Pedro Augusto. Circular Festival de Artes Performativas, Auditório Municipal, Vila do Conde (PT)
Several. Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto (PT)
What is the color when black is burned? With Ghuna X, SESC, São Paulo, Brasil (BR)
2013
Vinco (acção para explicação da lâmpada). Pedro Oliveira Gallery, Porto (PT)
Queda, Evento, Composição, Figura II. Appleton Square, Lisbon (PT)
Queda, Evento, Composição, Figura. Preview MAP, Mosteiro S. Bento da Vitória, TNSJ; Porto (PT)
Tombo, Maus Hábitos, Porto (PT)
2012
What is the color when black is burned? With Ghuna X, Mosteiro S. Bento da Vitória, TNSJ; Porto (PT)
2009
im- . In colaboration of Francisco Camacho, SISMO Festival, Matadero, Madrid, Spain. Festival Citemor, Montemor-o-velho, and Teatro Helena Sá e Costa, Porto (PT)
2008
While my guitar gently weeps. Matador Kantine, Berlim, Germany (DE)
2007
Perfection in her hands. Apêndice, Porto (PT)
Untitled Pregnancy – II Act – Aniversary; MAC Serralves, Pêssegos p’ra Semana, Porto (PT)
ARCO, Madrid, Spain (ES)
2006
Can. EIRA 33, Lisbon (ES)
2003
How do you look? Maus Hábitos; Oporto (PT)
PROJECTS / RESIDENCIES
2018
Residency at EVA International — Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick, Ireland (IE)
2015
Performance… again! — Performance and video curatorial program at Rivoli Teatro Municipal, Porto (PT)
COLLETIONS
Portuguese State Contemporary Art Collection / Lisbon (PT)
Antonio Cachola Collection — MACE / Elvas Portugal (PT)
Ilidio Pinho Collection / Porto (PT)
Oliva Art Center — Norlinda and Jose Lima Collection / Sao Joao da Madeira, Portugal (PT)
PLMJ Collection / Lisbon (PT)
Maria e Armando Cabral Collection / Lisbon (PT)
Porto Municipal Art Collection / Porto (PT)