“Vera Mantero’s body, designed, installed, choreographed, seen, alive, suspended” – this is how Alexandre Melo wrote about the relationship between Rui Chafes’ iron sculpture and the body that inhabited it, Vera Mantero’s, in 2004, the work that represented Portugal at the 26th São Paulo Visual Arts Biennial.

“Comer o Coração” consists of an iron sculpture suspended in the air and a living body inhabiting it, in vertigo, resulting from a joint conception and creation between sculptor Rui Chafes and choreographer and dancer Vera Mantero. The piece has since taken on new configurations, evolving from a large-scale sculpture to a smaller dimension, now suspended from various points, like a web, reformulating the relationship between the living body and the inert body, constructing a new entity generated by the coexistence of the two.

At the invitation of BoCA, “Comer o Coração” now takes on a new perspective and a new name, “Comer o Coração em cena” (Eating the Heart on Stage), as it migrates to the theater stage, the magnitude of a work that had its origin in the museum and has already traveled through the exhibition and natural setting (among the trees).