About

Jo Pereira da Costa is a sensory artist and performance maker working between London and Lisbon. Their practice unfolds at the intersection of body, memory, and resistance, using scent and taste as artistic languages to explore embodied knowledge, intimacy, and personal and collective histories. Drawing upon queer experience and intersectional feminist philosophy, their work approaches the body not as an object of representation, but as an active, thinking archive—one inscribed with social, political, and emotional narratives.

Through performance, theatre, installation, moving image, and writing, Jo challenges the ocular-centric traditions of Western art by reawakening smell and taste as critical tools of perception, empathy, and storytelling. Their sensory interventions create immersive encounters where audiences are invited to feel, remember, and reimagine.

Jo is the founder of Aftertaste, a project exploring food as dramaturgical practice, and the writer-director of Maria-Rapaz, a gastronomical performance premiered in Lisbon. They are also the writer-director of A Scent’s Caress, a finalist for the RCA x IFF Artistry Prize, developed in collaboration with the Royal College of Art and International Flavors & Fragrances. Their work has been exhibited, screened, and published internationally, including presentations at CICA Museum, Casa Capitão, BBC Television Centre, and publications such as Anarkiss and Lesbos Library.