May 22 ‒ June 26, 2011
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INTRODUCTION For her exhibition at MINI / Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38 from May 22–June 26, 2011, Catalina Parra selected works produced between 1969 and today, stemming from extended periods in Germany, Chile, Canada and the United States. This exhibition at Ludlow 38 is Parra’s first solo show in New York in over a decade, after the exhibition curated by Jane Farver at Lehman College Art Gallery, New York (1991) and It’s Indisputable, one of the two inaugural exhibitions at the Jersey City Museum, New Jersey (2001). In the early 2000s Parra went to Argentina to work as the cultural attaché for the . Chilean government. During this time, Parra says, she felt disconnected from developments in New York and returned from Buenos Aires in 2010. We are glad to have the opportunity to reintroduce her work at MINI / Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38 in New York. Revisiting Parra’s work is especially relevant today, I believe, since there is a number of 1990 (collage) artists from a younger generation whose work is akin in form, stemming from the readymade material of newspapers and fashion magazines today. The politically outspoken nature of Parra’s work is mirrored in today’s conversations with artists yet , Bronx, N.Y.: The Gallery, The Gallery, N.Y.: , Bronx, formal aspects often veil it. Relying on a variety of media including drawing, collage and film, Parra has demonstrated an W 38 extraordinary sensibility towards the socio-political affairs that take place around us. As artist Coco Fusco outlined in a 1991 in Retrospect: Catalina Parra essay that was published in the catalogue for Parra’ s solo show at the INTAR Gallery, the artist “concentrates on the process The Society of the Spectacle of coming to terms with information that connotes something different than what it denotes.” With an aesthetic awareness The human touch nr 4, 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. In these works, Parra critically examines — 2 O military interventions as well as the empty promises of financial institutions and capitalist consumer society. 1 Herzberg, P. Julia New York, Bronx, Gallery, Art Lehman College 4, 1992 6-April February 1991, 13. 2 Guy Debord, 1994, 7. Zone Books, York: New Fig. The exhibition at Ludlow 38 opened with a series of small-scale personal photographs taken by Parra at the beginning of her career near Lake Constance, Germany, shortly before and after she began working as an independent artist and in L collaboration with Ulrike Oettinger. These images depicted the artist herself, newly arrived in the rural German context, as well as images of friends and other artists such as Wolf Vostell and Tabea Blumenschein, an actor who starred in several of Ulrike Oettinger’s films. Presented adjacently, and inside the same display case, the exhibition featured the magazine Manuscritos (1975), the first publication of art criticism published after the Chilean military coup of 1973, as well as the perspectivethat the share Debord and the of outside space a find cannot we omnipresentmode and dominant stage to which communication from of exist. not doesspace a such revolt; a within. from come must then, revolt, The suggests she work collage Parra’s From thatreality the subvert can we if that we if real, acceptas to supposedare we critique and question to learncan andimages information, of flow the then may we receive, we that language stitch construct or begin to to able be and aware more new, a together perhaps is that one reality;conscious beautiful. more aspiringandwriter a is Rychen Jailee andhistory artdegrees in with curator museumstudies. catalogue for Parra’s first solo exhibition in her native Chile, at Galeria Epoca, Santiago de Chile, 1977. Opposite these works we mounted a selection from her 1992 series Here, there, everywhere. Suspended in the front gallery we selected a series of collages that had never previously been shown. Parra made these collages in the early 1970s while she was in the early stages we we of her career in Hegne, Germany. Together these suspended works formed a sort of antechamber to the works shown near the gallery’s entrance. USA, Where Liberty is a Statue (1987), a thirty second video that was played on the ‘Spectacolor’ billboard as in Times Square as part of the Public Art Fund project titled Messages to the Public (1982–1990) was displayed in the ‘second’ gallery, past the suspended pieces. For this video work, the artist created an animation using the words of her father, the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra. The piece wittingly questions the idolized American vision of freedom and liberty. The Fales spectacle is in fact related fact in is Library & Special Collections at NYU lent us a number of preparatory sketches that Parra made in anticipation of the project, spectacle, is defined as a asdefined is Debord, like Debord, ² displayed alongside publications from previous exhibitions by the artist in the passage space of the gallery. Finally, for FOSA LUD (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 itself. the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Documentation of the intervention was presented at Ludlow 38 in the form of a video installation in the rear gallery alongside the pieces Diario da Vida from 1977 and 2010. spectacle I am most grateful to Catalina Parra. We hope that the transcript of our conversation will help the reader gain additional Jailee Rychen Creating work that mimicsthethat work Creating Parra both that seemsevident It spectacular society spectacular access to her oeuvre. I am also indebted to the Ludlow 38 interns Amran Frey and Justin Bradford Richardson who have helped to realize the exhibition and the publication as well as Jailee Rychen and Jean Franco for their insightful texts. cases,she many Inimages. other advertisedbeing product the removes scope viewer’s the widen to order in method Parra’s interpretation. of above to meaningreferred double of similarmethod a exposes effectively employed is meaningthat hidden of materialoriginalnewspaperwithin the Parracollages. utilizes her in she that ironichypocritical andthe exposes “The headlinesas such messagesof Edge”Financial the Touch, Human does she What Undisputable.” “It’s and re-contextualizedissectand isin them original,challengesthe that manner a meaningbehindthem.underlying messageshidden the expose to order In Parrauses, she that media the of and similarlyambiguous employs carefullymeditatedartisticlanguage. certainperspective, a from Therefore, by critique her buildsartist the media the of methods the emulating critique. her of subject the is that critiquedbeing object the of language Guy of theoreticalideas the echoes the of concept Debord’s Debord. spectacle the of society livesmodern our of vision Parra’s to consumer- and capitalist a within concept Debord’s obsessed society. of dominatedhighlyby so is that society to able longer no is it that images realitythe from realitytrueidentify media. the superficially by produced the describes Debord the of project the and result the “both not is It production. of mode dominant real the to added decoration mere realthis of heartvery the is It world. unreality.” society’s to collages,stressesthat her in Parra the challenge and analyze languageutilizethe required to are the of Finally I would like to express my gratitude to the director of Goethe-Institut New York, Dr. Stephan Wackwitz, as well as by MINI and Friends of Goethe for their continuous support of Ludlow 38. Tobi Maier, Curator Y Her work work Her IT ¹ .” imbunche REAL Catalina Parra R In Parra’s newspaper collages,she newspaper Parra’s In HE influenced by the work of John John of work the influenced by of collagespolitical whose Heartfield a portrayedimages photographic the duringmessageanti-fascist strong Nazi and Hitler of rise the of time beenhas work her says She Germany. in sensibilityfound the informedby experienceas her but work Heartfield’s various in working and livingartist an under globe, the countries around has conditions,political various of development the to led inevitably critique. of languagedifferent a the Chileduringin While working ParraPinochet,Agusto dictatorshipof of use subtle the through learnedthat could she juxtapositionsmaterials and servedthat language a in work produce oppositional strong camouflage;her as regime,Pinochet the about message used,materials she encodedwithinthe government detected by not was of speak to order “In authorities. the sufferingby causedand pain the artistthe democracy, silencingof double of language a invented esotericthatlanguage meaning,an of theme the upon unsuspiciousdrew the of myth the reality new a space, new a created her express to free was she where defianceand sorrow of feelings thatrealitypolitical harsh the towards time a At facing. was country home her intellectualsartists,writersand when for prison in thrown being all were the rebelliousagainststancetheir being was work Parra’s dictatorship, that Proof Chile.exhibitedin openly successfultogetherstitching was in she one when contestation of space new a elsewhere. found be not could particular a directlystate not does provide explicitly she does nor position delicatelymessage; she obvious an only meaningis the that so text alters insertsand cuts She skewed. slightly INTERVIEW with Tobi Maier T GE O The following conversation between Catalina Parra professors like Jauß, Kambartel and Dahrendorf, etc. the materials, the feeling, the sensitivity with materials and Tobi Maier was recorded during a visit to Ulrike was an avant-gardist; she spent many years in Paris in my work. They never linked it to the political situation Parra’s apartment on New York’s Upper West Side and admired Gertrude Stein.