Remains. Graça Pereira Coutinho Temporary Exhibition Hall on ground floor 9 December 2006 - 3 March 2007

This exhibition was part of the project that the Museum of Sacred Art has been developing, to open its collection to dialogue with contemporary Portuguese artists. We mention here the exhibitions with Rui Sanches, Ilda David, Adriana Molder and now Graça Pereira Coutinho. The artist developed her work inspired by a clothed sculpture representing Christ, which came from a mid-17th century Portuguese workshop. The exhibition was the result of joint work by the Museum of Sacred Art and the Directorate of Museum Services of the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs. The title Remains expresses the desire to question what is ethereal and what is eternal: that which remains, the vestiges of a path, of a passageway.
The exhibition includes a careful distribution of light, concentrated in the first area where, on a large table sits a sculpture of Christ, who opens His arms in a gesture of making an offer, in front of a pile of ashes, imposing the question of the beginning and the end of the World, in the Biblical passage of Genesis.
In the second space, on a wall, rods hang in an unstable horizontal balance, on which are attached scraps of cloth and straw, a sort of stratography of life, of the waste, or the trail of memories of other times...
In the third area, some drawings in mixed techniques, with great material density, revealed the research of the artist into the subject of our place, the question of identity, the sense of understanding where we belong. Included was a theme that has been explored by the artist for a number of years, House Hunting. Looking for home, in the sense of perceiving where each one of us ought to or wants to return.

Francisco Clode Sousa

Graça Pereira Coutinhowas born in 1949, in Lisbon.
She studied sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon. Her post-graduate work was done at St. Martin's School of Art in London, where she has lived since 1971.
She has presented numerous collective and individual exhibitions in Portugal and abroad.
The most recent exhibitions include 4 Passos 7X, at the Deer Room of the Museum of Natural History in Lisbon, Regresso a Lisboa, at the White Pavilion of the Lisbon City Museum, 2003, the National Historical Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Arco Madrid, etc.
She received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and her works appear in the collections of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Secretariat of State for Culture, and the Museum of Osaka, among others.