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                                                                                                                                                            portrait by Mark Julian Loopstra


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multidisciplinary artists between the realm of matter and idea



Vera da Costa is a Portuguese multidisciplinary artist based between the Netherlands and Portugal. Her practice is rooted in performance, textiles and installation, exploring how materials, bodies and environments inform one another.


Textile is her primary medium of research. Through weaving, natural dyeing, manipulation and reuse, she explores fabric as a carrier and keeper of memory, knowledge, labour and care. Her ongoing study of herbalism informs both her use of plants as dyes and her broader approach to making, rooted in tending, reciprocity and interdependence. She is interested in the relationships and knowledge held within materials, and in what emerges through their transformation.


Her research unfolds through installation, bringing together textile, light, sound, natural materials and performance. She considers how these elements can shape perception, movement and atmosphere, while approaching materials as collaborators rather than passive tools.


Performance enters through ritualistic actions and gestures of care. Tea serving is a recurring element within her installations: herbal blends are formulated specifically for each environment and intention, turning their preparation and serving into a shared act of ritual, exchange and presence.


Care, listening and slowness are central to her practice. Through ritual, repetition and intuitive processes, Da Costa creates situations that invite pause, connection and collective presence. This extends into her work with music and festival environments. Through scenography and spatial interventions, she explores the potential of gatherings as temporary ecosystems where art, music, bodies and landscape can meet. Her approach to these spaces is both artistic and conscious of their material impact, seeking sustainable, attentive ways of making within environments often shaped by ephemeral construction and consumption.


Across her practice, Da Costa works through an embodied and relational understanding of making. She is interested in how the spaces we create can affect the ways we gather, listen, care and relate, and in what becomes possible when material, human and more-than-human worlds are approached as interconnected and interdependent.


Vera holds a professional degree in photography with a focus on Analogue practices and a BA in Fine Arts from Willem de Kooning Academy.









Highlighted showcases

Zeedykes @ ISO Amsterdam,
Amsterda, NL, 2026

Waking Life,
Crato, PT, 2026

Canopy, Horst,
Vilvoorde, BG, 2026

POS <> VDS,
Amsterdam, NL, 2026

POS <> Casa Fiorita Amsterdam, NL, 2026

Pelagic
 scenography, Rotterdam, NL, 2026

 DOHM,
performance and scenography, Rotterdam, NL, 2026

Etape + Afterglow, @ Multipla,
performance and scenography, Amsterdam, NL, 2026

IFFR x Dokhuis @ FENIX
group screening and pannel talk, Rotterdam, NL, 2026

Serendipity Arts Festival
 group exhibition, Goa, INDIA, 2025

Tending to Rest solo, New Studio Amsterdam, NL, 2025

Chronicles of Intimacy
group exhibition, K:art Studio at Pie Factory Margate Gallery, UK, 2025

Stangely Familiar
group exhibition, Het Archief Rotterdam, NL 2025

Pietà of Sorrow
solo screening and performance, Dockhuis Rotterdam, NL 2025

Halloween Minerals
screening, Berlin, G, 2025
Killing Darlingsgroup exhibition, TENT Rotterdam, NL, 2023
In Primary Things, Still Life,
group exhibition, Grote of Sint Janskerk Schiedam, NL 2023portrait by Julian Loopstra









Based between Netherlands and Portugal
Contact
email - veramachadodacosta@gmail.com
instagram - Vera da Costa