Ernesto de Sousa (1921–1988) was a major and multifaceted figure from the Portuguese avant-garde—artist, poet, critic, essayist, curator, editor, filmmaker, and a promoter of experimental ideas and artistic expressions. Reflecting questions of hierarchy, authorship, and the complexity of framing or dividing within the multiple and complementary practices of

Ernesto de Sousa—whose motto “Your Body is My Body, My Body is Your Body” serves as a poetic manifesto—this publication explores the various aspects of his oeuvre (visual, poetical, and theoretical) and his outstanding inventiveness of concepts.

The volume brings together a selection of works, unpublished archives and their translations, and theoretical texts by Ernesto de Sousa, including the first complete translation in English of «Orality, the future of art?» (1968). Richly illustrated, the book reunites an introductory text by Lilou Vidal, two new essays by Paula Parente Pinto and by José Miranda Justo along with a text by Hugo Canoilas.

Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition of the centenary of his birth, Ernesto de Sousa, Exercises of Poetic Communication with Other Aesthetic Operators curated by Lilou Vidal at Galerias Municipais in Lisbon (27/11/2021 - 27/02/2022), this monographic book pays tribute to the kaleidoscopic vision of Ernesto de Sousa through an intergenerational, transhistorical dialogic approach, accompanied by an opuscule with works by the participating artists:
José de Almada Negreiros, Oficina Arara, Pedro Barateiro, Isabel Carvalho, Salomé Lamas, Hanne Lippard, Sarah Margnetti, Franklin Vilas Boas Neto, Rosa Ramalho, Nils Alix-Tabeling, Nora Turato, Treffen in Guincho*, Ricardo Valentim.