MASP PRESENTS VIDEO ROOM: LETÍCIA PARENTE

The show brings together five of the main works of the pioneering artist of video art in Brazil

25 February to 24 April 2022

The MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, together with the Special Secretariat of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism, presents, from February 25 to April 24, 2022, the exhibition Sala de vídeo: Letícia Parente, in the 2nd basement of the institution.
The exhibition, curated by María Inés Rodríguez, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art of MASP, brings together five works that are fundamental to the understanding of the practice of Letícia Parente: artist, researcher and pioneer of video art in Brazil. The exhibition is part of the already
traditional program of the MASP Video Room, in which it proposes an in-depth study of audiovisual productions within the scope of artistic production.

Letícia Parente (Salvador, Bahia, 1930 - Rio de Janeiro, 1991) developed her interest in art in parallel with her scientific work and began to dedicate herself to artistic practice in the 1970s, when she migrated from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. In contact
with artists such as Anna Bella Geiger (Rio de Janeiro, 1933), Ana Vitória Mussi (Laguna, Santa Catarina, 1943) and Sonia Andrade (Rio de Janeiro, 1935), she found in art a way to freedom of expression amidst the repressive context of the civil-military dictatorship (1964-85). Together they shared experiments with various techniques, including video, a new technology that was still little explored at the time, inaugurating the field of video art. The selection presents 5 works that are fundamental to an understanding of Parente's career: I Closet of Me (1975), In (1975), Trademark (1975), Preparation I (1975) and Preparation II (1976). In these, the variety of situations used by Parente expresses the dynamism and plurality, typical of the artist's practice. Using everyday elements, such as the wardrobe,
the thread, the needle and the photograph, Parente elaborated fields of experimentation that bring intimate life closer to the issues of society.

In the words of the curator, such elements, associated with the use of video technique, create "metaphorical spaces to talk about a human condition, feminine and socially determined to live confined under parameters established by a patriarchal, dictatorial and restrictive system.

The metaphor can be extended to the representation of a specific political situation that restricted civil rights of the population, embodied by the point of view of a woman in the intimacy of her home."

In Marca registrada, emblem of video art in Brazil, the artist records herself sewing on the sole of her foot the phrase: MADE IN BRAZIL, alluding to the commodity character instituted in the social body. By exposing a painful process in super close-up in all its time and duration, the video is able to generate an anguishing sensation to the spectator, who dialogues with the experience of conditioning of the female body in a patriarchal society and in a context of belonging to a country in the middle of a civil-military dictatorship.

In Eu armário de mim she presents, through photographs, the elements of her house and her children, projecting a sense of the passage of time and life through these images. The house and the body constitute two of the central aspects in Parente's trajectory of experimentation and are means for the creation of a poetics that expresses itself in materiality.

ABOUT LETICIA PARENTE

PhD in chemistry, full professor at the Federal University of Ceará and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, she was a video artist, engraver and researcher, having participated, between 1975 and 1991, in the most important video art exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. In 1973, she had her first solo exhibition of paintings and engravings at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Fortaleza. In 1976, he held the first exhibition of art and science in Brazil with the installation Measures, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. In 1981, she took part in the 16th São Paulo International Biennial with works in postal art and video.
Letícia Parente's work has recently been shown in the exhibitions Radical Women: Latin-American Art, 1960-1985, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the Brooklyn Museum in New York; Histórias da sexualidade, at MASP; and Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, at the Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, among others.

SERVICE
VIDEO ROOM: LETÍCIA PARENTE
2o subsolo
25.02 - 24.04.22
MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
Avenida Paulista, 1578 - Bela Vista
01310-200 São Paulo, SP
Telephone: (11) 3149-5959
Hours: Tuesday free Qualicorp, from 10am to 8pm (entry until 7pm); Wednesday to Sunday, from 10am to
6pm (entry until 5pm); closed on Mondays
Booking online required through the link masp.org.br/ingressos
Tickets: R$ 50 (admission); R$ 25 (half-entry)

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