The Temple
Performance · Video · Textile Installation · Collaborative OdeThe Pietà of Sorrow is a myth in motion, a ritual that transforms grief, memory, and joy into collective presence. At its heart stands the Pietà, not as a static icon of mourning, but as a living force of creation and transformation. The work asks how the body remembers, how symbols and gestures speak beyond language, and how art can create safe spaces for what is difficult yet essential to hold.
To honor these questions, the work needed more than a screen or a stage. It needed a vessel, a space where the audience could step inside, cross a threshold, and meet the Pietà within her own world.
The temple emerged from this search. A living installation, its walls are draped in inherited fabrics that carry generations of memory, knowledge, and stories. Each cloth holds a lineage, each one offers presence. The Pietà evokes something specific and individual for each of us. Together, they form a place where the intimate becomes collective: echoes of sorrow and tenderness, brokenness and beauty, resonate and converge.
Here, grief is sacred. The tender, the broken, and the uncomfortable are given space to be and to be seen. Not as flaws. They are held in love and compassion. They are experienced in their beauty.
In every context, the temple takes a new shape. Agency is given to each fabric, material, and location, allowing them to act and react with one another. My role is simply to listen, to translate, and to materialize the conversations happening beyond words.
Pietà of Sorrow Temple @ Soda Fabriek Schiedam, NL 2025
Pietà of Sorrow Temple @ C3 Studios Rotterdam, NL 2025
Based between Netherlands and Portugal
Contact
email - veramachadodacosta@gmail.com
instagram - Vera da Costa
Contact
email - veramachadodacosta@gmail.com
instagram - Vera da Costa