The Conversations, which are now beginning, depart from the work of Manuela Marques, presented for the first time to the public and the result of several months of research and exploration of the Château de Versailles, during which the artist recorded spaces, atmospheres, details of objects and unexpected graffiti, and which were transformed into a laborious visual labyrinth that eludes all narrative. These sequences of images, to which sounds and a video are added, allow for a dialogue with the objects of the Founder’s Collection, which, presented in a different space to the one for which they were originally created, now find renewed possibilities of interpretation.

The publication produced to go alongside this exhibition is an extension of this initial ‘conversation’, reproducing some of the works by the artist Manuela Marques that feature in the show, in dialogue both amongst themselves and with the 18th-century pieces belonging to the Gulbenkian Collection, establishing free intepretations rather than drawing parallels. With texts by João Carvalho Dias and Nuno Vassallo e Silva, who together commissioned the exhibition, the publication also includes an insert with a reproduction of the piece verre 7, from the verre series, by Manuela Marques.