Catalina Parra
May 22 - June 26, 2011
Reception for the artist: Sunday May 22, 1-6pm
MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38 is pleased to announce a solo
show by Catalina Parra. For this exhibition Parra has selected works made between 1969
and today, stemming from extended periods in Germany, Chile, Canada and the United
States. The exhibition opens with a series of crayon drawings executed by Parra at the
beginning of her career near Lake Constance, Germany. Also presented are early collages
and photographs including material that led to Parra’ s contribution for Manuscritos
(1975), the first publication of art criticism after the Chilenean military coup of 1973.
Relying on a variety of media including drawing, collage and film, Parra has
demonstrated an extraordinary sensibility towards the socio-political affairs that take
place around us. As artist Coco Fusco outlined in a 1991 essay that was published in the
catalogue for Parra’ s solo show at the Intar Gallery, Parra “ concentrates on the process
of coming to terms with information that connotes something different than what it
denotes.” With an aesthetic awareness that draws parallels to the work of Hannah Höch
and John Heartfield, the artist repeatedly begins her constructions from newspaper
advertisements to create hand-sewn collages and mixed media works. Her newspaper
collages are executed in series form, each series containing multiple variations. The
exhibition at Ludlow 38 features pieces from a number of these series including Coming
your way (Banff, 1994), The Human touch (1989) and Here, there, everywhere (1992).
In these works, Parra critically examines military interventions as well as the empty
promises of financial institutions and capitalist consumer society.
Parra was commissioned to develop a number of pieces that resulted in the creation of
new time-based work. USA, Where Liberty is a Statue (1987) is a thirty second video
that was played on the Spectacolor billboard in Times Square as part of the Public Art
Fund project titled Messages to the Public (1982-1990). The artist created an animation
using the words of her father, the Chilean Poet Nicanor Parra. The piece questions the
idolized American vision of freedom and liberty. For FOSA (2005), the artist employed
excavation equipment in the Atacama Desert (Chile) to create a land art piece that
resembles a mass grave. Monumental and ephemeral at the same time, Parra pays tribute
to the many individuals that went missing during the military dictatorship of Augusto
Pinochet (1973-1990). Documentation of the intervention is presented at Ludlow 38 in
the form of a video installation.
curated by Tobi Maier
Catalina Parra was born in 1940 in Chile and currently lives in New York City. Solo
exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art, New York (1981), Intar Gallery, New York
(1991), Lehman College Art Gallery, New York (1991) and It’ s Indisputable at the Jersey
City Museum, New Jersey (2001). Recent exhibitions include Subversive Practices,
Art under Conditions of Political Repression, 60’ s -80’ s South America-Europe at
Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2009) and the II Trienal de San Juan, Puerto
Rico (2009).
download press release here
download list of works
image: Catalina Parra, landscape in Hegne, next to the cloister, 1970
