Instalação Rorschach (Rorschach Installation) consists of 10 books infested with bookworms, shown open on the wall. The marks of the worms’ feast are lines and holes on the open pages of the books, making them resemble Rorschach tests. If the existence of bookworms reflects the lack of care these volumes have endured, then the patterns the creatures have formed—by resembling a tool for the psychological assessment of personality disorders—become a metaphor for the fate of culture in Portuguese society. The (beautiful) disintegration of the books suggests that culture itself, also uncared for, is disintegrating.

In the video Se não há cultura, não há nada (If There Is no Culture There Is Nothing), we follow an antiquarian bookseller through his store and overstuffed basement. We hear him ramble on about books, rare findings, entire collections that were held by prominent families for generations and are now coming onto the market to be sold. 

Filipa Oliveira in ArtForum, 2011