The measure of the house is the body
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Katia Maciel

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Signs, stereotypes and seams by Letícia Parente
The map, the house, the body. Geographies proposed by Letícia Parente in two series of Xerox prints. The first series, entitled the house, is formed by a map and three perspectives of a house. The map is a collage of three cities, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza, neighbors that never were, in the image and in the life of the artist. The second Xerox, from the same series, shows the drawing of a house on the ground floor. In one of the rooms, we read a place to find the direction and we see the space full of letters N as signs of compasses, of North, of direction. In the room below, we see an arrow indicating seven alternatives against loneliness and the drawing of seven small rectangles. In the neighboring room, we read desired dialogues and drawings of hands in gestures that point in many directions. In the room above, it says comings and goings, turns and revolts and the field full of opposing arrows. In a small space in a back room, we read pollution-proof purification rituals. Finally, in the open space on the side with a white circle surrounded by darkness, we read the sun is always available. In the third photocopy, the house is presented in a side cut, Letícia draws a clothesline made of herbs, a row of cloud tiles, gas pipes, and the floor is supported by grains of stars and vibrations. Writing and drawing create a real house like a dream.

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The map is the house, the house is the map in the artist's sensitive fable that, between comings and goings, expands its territory in a graphic plane of writings to formulate a cartography of expression and desire for dialogues against loneliness. The scrutiny of the functions of each architecture, enclosed in symbols and signs, implies a poetic accent made in the relationship between text and image, in which the text becomes image and the image becomes text. The writing acts as an unexpected caption that contradicts the accuracy of the drawing, or it is the drawing that reveals a form that the text does not contain. In the mismatch between what is seen and what is read, we have the displacement that forms the poem.

In the third perspective of the house series, the artist creates a visual poem in which the tiles, floor and walls of a house are made of writing. It is a drawing of an almost school-like house, the kind seen in school textbooks, drawn on a grid paper. Capturing this form, we see four lines that build a box around the drawing. Next to the box is a caption - At the bottom of the coffin on its feet, the house and what it contains. The caption describes the elements that structure the image, the box, the house and what it contains, which however is not inside, but in between, on the roof of words.

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The tiles will sleep on the roof
The rain will fall on the roofs
The dust will settle on the roofs
The sun will beat down on the roofs
The wind will sweep the roofs
The size of this roof is a multiple of tiles
And it makes up the space through our bodies...

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Bodies of tiles are a synthesis that situates the body as a measure of the construction, just as the walls or the floor structure the shape of the house. The house adds meaning to a body imprisoned by its functions. What would the house be without the body?

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House
what house?

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House is a shell, a membrane of the outside. But, for Letícia, the house is the inside. In the lines of this architecture of letters, we see the artist's writing build a house that shelters time.

 

The roof kept
The secrets of the gnawing of time
It will be like a blanket......

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The text folds and unfolds the artist's poetic sensitivity. From body to body, from house to world, what is written reverberates the gesture that insists and the form that accompanies it. Through an intimate and personal writing, Letícia reveals the lines of her own architecture. The house is the body, said Lygia Clark; the house was the nest for Hélio Oiticica. In the work of Letícia Parente, the body is a tangle where a nest is discovered.

 

I closet of myself
I closet of myself
I closet of myself
Tells about me what I contain
I closet of myself
Comings and goings. Twists and turns
I sat alone. I sat with. Seats with
I consume the color of fruits and the flavors of time....

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Closed closet. Closet with black clothes, closet with white clothes, closet with hanging and stacked shoes, closet with chest x-rays, closet with onions, closet with chairs, closet with crumpled papers, closet with all the children inside. These are the photographic images of the audiovisual Closet of me. Once again, the artist creates a repertoire of household objects, a closet that stores, accumulates, organizes. Separating and classifying are, then, domestic operations that, in the exaggeration of the artist's montages, dissect the details of a reinvented daily life.

 

The artist makes the video In in which she enters the closet, hangs herself and closes it.

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In

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In is inside, it is smaller, cozy. Inside the closet fits the whole life. The purchases, the clothes, the full, the empty, the inside, the outside. “Tell me what I contain”

In Letícia Parente’s work, we believe in the tasks of each day, in the prayer of each day, in the science of each day, in the politics that we sew on the soles of our feet, like the agony of every day made in Brazil. These are forms of resistance: resistance to the politics of silencing, to the closure, to the torture of years of dictatorship, to economic nationalism at all costs as the anthem of a nation.

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Country
What country?

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Letícia Parente was born and raised in Bahia. Married, she raises her children in Fortaleza. Her father’s home is Bahia. Her husband’s, Ceará. Letícia’s home is Rio de Janeiro.

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Edifício Brasil was the name of the building where she lived in Ipanema when she made the video Made in Brasil, in 1975. A sum of different places like a single Brazil hand-embroidered on the soles of her feet. This variety of meanings preserved the video as an icon of a time, a people, a nation in the construction and deconstruction of what the words made in announce. So is the body a product? Is the country a body? Is the hand a machine? Made in Brazil points to the acquired national as a mark of what is ours and cannot stop being. A mark that hurts in the agony of the body that receives it without moving, unharmed by the movement of the needle that weaves an unwanted destiny on the soles of the feet, with an irony of circumstances in the northeastern affection of the gesture.

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Body
what body is this?

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“the woman’s body written all over with its fissures, the look, the arms” (1) In the second series Xérox, Mulheres, the words outline the body. Eyes in eyes, curves in curves, shadows in shadows, the outline of the chin, waist. The body folds in on itself. In the 1980s, a video by the poet Arnaldo Antunes stated that the names of things are not the things themselves. Letícia walks the opposite path: words are the things.

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Womb of the soul
Womb of space

Face
What face is this?

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The face is a map, says philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The face is the interface of a body that does not communicate. The face confuses, deceives. We do not see our face. We see all parts of the body except the face. The face is a construction. A fragment with another fragment with another fragment. Mouth, nose, eyes. Openings of the body sealed by the artist. So, what face is this? It is a drawing and not a mask, because it does not hide, it shows.

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In another work from the same series Mulheres, Letícia brings together physiognomies of women printed in magazines and newspapers, some with wigs, others without, inverting the situation of the model, the mannequin, in the search for women looking like mannequins and mannequins looking like women, or a sequence of women with glasses with a set of advertisements, of stereotypes of the feminine. Letícia turns the stereotype inside out with the same signs used in the construction of clichés: objects of feminine use are subverted and even faces are cut out and edited as models of use in situations to be outlined, such as, for example, the happy smile, the sentimental or generous mouth. Collage and montage are processes used in the artist's xerox and postal art work. Strategies of form. The mode of construction and the means of propagating it disrupt the media circuit by deconstructing and reconstructing its operations.

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In another work in Xerox, Letícia draws two brackets, one open, the other closed, and writes one holds me and the other releases me.

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From this tension, the works emerge. What is closed and what is open, what is populated, what is deserted. Could solitude be the feminine condition? Between her husband, her children, chemistry and art, Letícia locks herself in the closet and inaugurates, in the silence of the gesture, the existential, experimental and political Brazilian video.

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The house

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Letícia Parente, artist, chemist and teacher, was married for 20 years, had 5 children, 14 siblings and many friends. In addition to knowing the so-called household chores, such as cooking, sewing and taking care of children and husband, the young woman from Bahia drove, was part of the Catholic youth and worked outside as a chemistry teacher, at the Federal University of Ceará and, later, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. All this in Brazil in the 60s and 70s.

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The videos that the artist produced between 1975-82 show images that never leave the house. Letícia Parente weaves a subtle thread between the house, the body and the sensitive territory of art. With needle and thread, she sews Brazil onto the sole of her foot, with the iron she redoes the positions between employer and maid and between clothes and body, with the hanger she keeps herself in the closet and with makeup she invents a mask that blinds. Each work she does adds to the experience and merges with it. The house is then the family, the religion, the country, the house is everything and everyone at the same time. What we see is raw, without retouching, without ulterior motives.

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Letícia does not embellish the moments of everyday life that she chooses. She makes the days that pass by her. I am a thing in the middle of things, I lock myself in the closet, I stretch out on the ironing board... At the same time I subvert. The maid becomes the boss and my foot is my land. In this movement lies the tension that characterizes the work of art, one eye that watches what is, while the other insists on what is not.

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Wireless telephone

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It was with a group of artist friends – Ana Vitória Mussi, Anna Bella Geiger, Fernando Cocchiarale, Ivens Machado, Miriam Danowski, Paulo Herkenhoff, Sônia Andrade – that Letícia made her first videos. In a game between friends, in which a word or phrase is said from ear to ear, the joy and relaxation of the group is what most impresses and infects those who watch this inaugural moment. Wireless telephone records this encounter that begins Brazilian video art.

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Preparation I

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In front of the mirror, the artist inverts her own image, but it is not a top-down view, it is a blindness instead of vision. Letícia carefully, like a woman who prepares her makeup before leaving the house, takes care of each part of her face. First, she sticks a piece of tape on her mouth and outlines her lips over it. Then, also over each eye, she repeats the operation. The drawing on the adhesive tape recreates what it hides. Without speech or sight, the woman continues to arrange her hair and fixes her constructed and wide-open eye in the mirror, and then leaves the mirror and the bathroom.

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In

 

How many times have we hung clothes in the closet? And how many times have we not wished to lock ourselves in the house or close the bedroom door? Isolation and closure bring us feelings of anguish, but also tranquility and peace. The artist mixes perceptions and objects. Why not hang ourselves together with the clothes? Why not feel like clothes? Why not stop feeling? Why not keep what we feel? She doesn't seem to think, she is just doing another task of the day: in everyday life, it is one thing after another. By closing the closet, the artist keeps herself in time.

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Children

Letícia includes her children in several works and in different ways. André and Angela are shown in Especular and in Quem blinked first? In both videos, the focus is on the exchange of words and glances, the relationship between the two, almost like a game or a bet, a game between siblings appropriated by a precise, conceptual and poetic framing by the artist.

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In O homem do arma e o arma do homem, Letícia once again records her son playing a game of simulating the same movement as the neon sign for a gym. This video was co-authored with her son, who also photographs other videos of his mother.

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The children, spread out around the house, talking, eating, sleeping, conversing, are the origin of the house.

In the audiovisual Armário de mim, Letícia puts all her children – André, Ângela, Lia, Cristiana and Pedro – in the closet and photographs them.

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Task 1

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Letícia lies down on the ironing board in front of her maid who calmly irons her dressed boss, with the same attention to detail as someone ironing a garment laid out flat. The artist has the calm of an empty garment, she doesn't move, she doesn't complain, she just stays. She is just any old garment, on any old day. There is no indifference, she is just another task completed. In the relationship between the boss and the maid there is no tension, only a silent complicity.

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Northeast

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The artist tries to remove two snakes wrapped in a sheet from a leather suitcase, to the sound of Caetano's song, No dia em que eu vim me fosse. The title and the song take us to a Northeast of migrants, to the wear and tear of the drought and the few provisions brought in the suitcases. Letícia, from Bahia and Ceará, knows this Brazil of losses that finds refuge in the big cities. The video is colorful and musical, the form reinforces the drama of the theme, almost interpreted by the dragging of the suitcase and the artist's face hidden by her hands in the last image.

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Registered trademark

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The feet walk and then the legs that cross show the sole of one of the feet to the still camera. The hand appears with the thread and needle that sews the words Made in Brazil. The stitches are firm as if on a stretched fabric. Without any hesitation, Letícia weaves on her own skin the state of Brazil, a country made outside of here, foreign property, the Brazil of 1975 that is foreign to us. The skin yields to the pressure of the needle that does not stop. In the gesture there is no violence, but courage and confrontation. Brazil is a strange house, us and others at the same time.

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Preparation II

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Form and vaccines aligned. Letícia applies one by one injections against cultural colonialism, racism, the mystification of politics and art. It is a critique of the political context beyond Brazilian borders. Once again the artist uses her own body as a support for the manifesto. As if getting vaccinated could prevent the worst evils among us.

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De afliti

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The voice repeats the prayer. Ora pro nobis, ora pro nobis, ora pro nobis. With each repetition, the black and white photograph of the hands clasped in prayer is replaced by another, which also prays. The artist's voice is hoarse and asks Ora pro nobis. In this prayer, the light appears and disappears. In prayer, there is no prayer, there are no requests or thanks, only the litany that whispers, that moves, that afflicts. In the repetition of gestures and prayer, there is only the feeling of prayer.

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Letícia Parente looks at the house. From the distance and proximity of this gaze emerged some of the first videos of Brazilian art, short, sharp videos, brief as intimate accounts, that go beyond the daily routine of the acts they shelter by pointing to what is on the reverse of these actions, the embrace of poetry that repeats itself throughout the day.

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Measurements Installation

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A set of stations to measure blood type, attention, vision, pain resistance, physical type, weight, height, breathing, and secret measurements. After collecting the data, the visitor proceeds to the exhibition of other data previously collected from newspapers and publications such as the Book of Records and relates the information. Movement timed by a voice that insists on counting the time that passes. The call for a participatory audience and the humor of the information about the records generate a new environment in Brazilian art. A true experimental laboratory in a museum, the first art and science installation known to exist in Brazil. In it, the thought of the body occupies the front line of the project. What body is this? And how does it relate to others? Is it a model or a copy? Is it individual or collective? It is the body of experience, produced, like one more product with brands and standards, tested like a machine to breathe and resist.

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Interactive art Rá Brasil

 

In 1984, Letícia created a flat structure with transparent test tubes forming a map of Brazil. When the visitor touches it, the color of the liquid inside the tubes changes through chemical reactions. For the second time, Brazil is part of the title of one of the artist's works. This time in the form of an interactive object driven by the viewer's energy. The artist experiments with the chemical changes that can be caused by the body itself as an energy field. The movement of colors and shapes in the construction of a particular and fluid image drawn by an action that becomes internal to the work.

In this experience, Letícia creates an interaction based on gesture; without touch, there is no change, color or movement. This is an interactive work that is built on the relationship with the viewer. The artist, who had already invited the viewer to participate in the process of the work in the installation Medidas, now includes his/her action as part of the work.

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By mail

 

Letícia Parente tries to send herself by mail, as a work of postal art, to participate in the XVI São Paulo Biennial, in 1981. Since the experiment was not allowed, the artist records her own face on video stamped with the Biennial's address.

 

The artist also participates in Brazilian Mail Art by sending her Xerox series. Some of them are described above.

Mail, telephone, newspaper, television, video were media used by the artist as a way to problematize the media themselves, and not only as vehicles of communication, but also of art. Letícia is a true multimedia artist, not only for appropriating them as a means of expression, but for questioning the limits between them, connecting them.

 

At least a third of Letícia Parente's video work is missing. Verde Desejo (1983) showed a boy in a coconut tree and hunger in the city, Volta ao roda do globo (1981) showed a journalist with the newspaper O Globo in ritualistic gestures, Onde (1978, co-authored with André Parente) recorded the television broadcasting the image of what was being recorded as a feedback loop in real time. In A chamada (1978), Letícia called herself and answered the call on another device, in yet another displacement of the artist from the media. Two spaces are connected by the telephone and by the artist's presence, which short-circuits the communication system designed for two-way communication and which the artist transforms into a single-way communication, generating another form of loop, this time around herself. In Pontos (1975), a drawn and cut-out pen is sewn onto the index finger and with it a dot is inscribed on the paper. Once again, the artist insists on the gesture of writing with needle and thread. These are just some of the videos described among the documents in the artist's archives, but there were also others that exist only in reports, such as that of her daughter Cristiana Parente, who recorded the mixing of colors in a blender while creating a work that has also been lost.

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Even so, the set of existing videos creates a unique repertoire in Brazilian video art and today preserves the gestures of an artist who felt at home in art.

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1 Statement by the artist to the FAAP Research Institute – Art Sector, Rio, June/1985