VERA MOTAPhantom limb sensation

Phantom sensation can result from errors occurring in the remapping process in the cortex following the loss of a body part. As a result, an overlap of adjacent neuronal areas takes place. In this reorganization of the body image, it can occur, for example, the invasion of the representational territory of the face over the territory of the hand, or the representation of the mouth in the place of the absent hand. Seeking to develop new strategies of participation, Vera Mota proposes exercises of inversion and displacement of the different axes and hierarchies of the body.

Vera Mota (Porto, 1982) has a degree in Fine Arts - Sculpture (2000-2005) and a Master in Contemporary Art Practices (2006-2008), from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto. Her artistic practice reveals itself mainly through sculpture, drawing, and performance, enjoying the breadth and permeability offered by these disciplines. With regular public presentations since 2005, her work involves a strong material component, in a process in which her body establishes itself as an indispensable agent. Performance is thus a means of production, composition, or even staging, promoting, and equating the involvement of the body as a generative methodology and axis for conceptual formulations. Recently, still focusing on the politics of the body, her work presents a sculptural animism that claims other perspectives for the body, other bodies and materiality, trying to perform processes of transfiguration, declassification of functions and transference between organic and inorganic, geological and biological bodies, as shown in her most recent solo exhibition "SEM CORPO/ DISEMBODIED" (Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto). Regarding exhibitions and performance programs, her work has also been presented in Galeria Municipal do Porto; MACE - Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas; Matadero (Madrid, Spain); Ireland's Biennial (Limerick, Ireland) and SESC (São Paulo, Brazil), among others.