Interstício, an exhibition by Inês Moura at Centro de Artes Visuais [CAV], in Coimbra, is essentially an exercise in absentia.

Formed by three complementary moments, we are welcomed with what I would say is the centrepiece: Chamei-lhe “Pedra” is the name given by the artist to an installation featuring an anthropomorphic stone, found by her, resting on an iron structure moulded to exert a certain rotational movement, a certain spinning sensation. Considering this feature of the iron, we imagine a potential action for the object. A plumb bob hovers above this stone. There is an absence between the two, a dialogue of attraction and repulsion and, naturally, tension. The interstice lies specifically in this materially empty space. The exhibition’s curator, Miguel von Hafe Pérez, presents the stone as a “deviant fiction” – the core of this exhibition paradoxically lies in its exterior – or, if we wish, its invisibility or reversal.

The aforementioned potential movement is further emphasised when we look at the set of photos entitled Rodei sobre mim mesma, na esperança de entender o mundo ao qual pertenço – 50 photos of the stone make it possible to look at it all around. While the viewer is not restrained from doing so around the object inside the venue, this photographic set conceptually explores its representational possibilities without a direct bearing on the body – looking and moving the head will do.

Finally, Desenhar com o Caminho presents three circular blotches with three different pigments (yellow clay, charcoal and red clay) gathered from a route walked by the artist, which, when displayed on the wall of the exhibition area, acquire a new quality. For Inês Moura, the path is (as is recorded on the exhibition text) the starting point. She finds in it the much-needed silence.

One last note on the interstice: between 2018 and 2019, Miguel von Hafe Pérez was the curator of Instersticial: diálogos no espaço entre acontecimentos, a two-part exhibition at Centro de Arte Oliva, in São João da Madeira, with works from Coleção Norlinda and José Lima. Around that time, Miguel von Hafe Pérez learnt, speaking to Andreia Magalhães, the director of the aforementioned institution, that science had just revealed an organ of the human body called the interstitium:

“this is a network of fluid-filled collagen and elastin cavities that hold more than a fifth of all the fluid in the body. Perfect metaphor for these interstices (or events) that (…) constitute a unity of meaning in the oriented reading that a curator intends to establish, by means of these associations shaped as work-space-work-space, and so forth”.[1]

And is there a better name for Chamei-lhe Pedra than work-space?

We shall ponder on this, around the stone.

Interstício is part of the Cycle a vida, apesar dela, curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez, open until September 10.

[1] Pérez, Miguel von Hafe. (2019). Intersticial: diálogos no espaço entre acontecimentos. S. João da Madeira: Câmara Municipal de S. João da Madeira. p. 23.