Persistence of consciousness: marks of identity

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Cristina Tejo*

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It is known that it is painful, if not impossible, to escape our time. Despite subjectivity guiding our experience in the world, the conjuncture nourishes the look and develops the knowledge that generates the work. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable or even frivolous to state that all authors and artists are fruits of their times, even if their works go beyond understanding and pertinence to other contexts and generations. In this way, we could say that Letícia Parente is located in this lineage: her work manifests its time. His videos touch on the resizing of identities, the relocation of social roles, the use of the body as a discursive support, the rise of exacerbated consumerism and the call to explore new media, aspects that characterize the art of the second half of the 20th century. These elements, however, are combined in a very peculiar way in the trajectory of this paradigmatic artist of Brazilian conceptual art and historically underpin part of the current production that deals with these issues.

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Letícia's accurate understanding of the female body stands out as a target of reification in a period of extreme questioning of women's position in society, a corroboration of Simone de Beauvoir's statements that one is not born a woman, she becomes. The imprisonment of female visual and identity construction procedures is represented from subversions and parodies of everyday situations in domestic environments, concomitantly simple and of high imagery power. In Preparation I, the banal act of dressing up to go out is transformed into putting on a mask. The sliding of the lipstick does not show the artist's lip lines, but because it is applied over a sticking plaster, it becomes a drawing of the lips, a representation over the real part. The eyeliner draws eyes on the plasters. Makeup takes on a masking character. What would supposedly be done to highlight female beauty is presented as falsification, deceit.

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In another performance without an audience, the artist opens a closet and hangs on a hanger through her own clothes. In this other comment about the adornments that can guarantee femininity, the criticism of the process of objectification of the human being, already identified as homo consumericus1, is more evident. Clothes and woman are confused in such a way that they do not separate. The clothing that increasingly gains the power to define identity and status is glued to the individual, who seems to no longer mean anything without his symbol of placement and expression. Still under the approach of adherence and contamination of identity by clothing and consumption, Letícia Parente lies down on an ironing board. Your skin-suit is ironed. There are no gimmicks. The rawness of the act is one of the ways of amplifying the urgency of her critical discourse, as was done in the 1970s, as in the challenging and risky performances of Marina Abramovic and Chris Burden, among others.

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The forcefulness of the image (which is directly linked to truth, to reality) is a resource widely used by artists from the second half of the 20th century onwards. Seeing is believing and in the case of Letícia, as well as many other artists, the action seen is the action performed. Trademark, exponential work by the artist from Ceará, appropriates the skin again. No longer as a blurring between the individual and consumption, but as a writing surface. The artist embroiders the words “Made in Brazil” on the sole of her foot in a close-up of the camera. Even knowing that this recurring game in the northeastern hinterland does not injure the epidermis and is reversible, the act raises apprehension and discomfort. The intention and the symbolic meaning of his performance are clear: the belonging marked with severity and aggressiveness that is eternalized in our imagination. The preference for the English language and the use of a traditional technique from his native region highlight another identity issue, the cultural one. A constant in Brazilian intellectual debates since Brazil's independence, questions about foreign influence and cultural colonialism resonate strongly not only in the country, but internationally, thanks to the process of political and economic independence through which various societies have been going through since the 1960s. , in addition to the increase in the flow of world immigration. These topics also serve as a background for Preparation II. A person applies vaccines against cultural colonialism, racism, political and artistic mystifications. The action is followed by filling out a conventional vaccination card.

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“The man with the arm and the man's arm” marks a later phase of Letícia Parente's investigations. Her focus migrates to a broader discussion of the body and includes affectivity and communication as catalysts in her work. The tone assumed in these works from the late 1970s leans towards the ludic and assimilates the other (the artist ceases to be the protagonist of the actions and starts to orchestrate the works). In this video, Letícia talks about the mythification of virility and resistance expected from the male body. A lighted advertisement for a fitness center shows the tireless movement of a weightlifter contracting his biceps, in a clear demonstration of strength. After a long period of exposure to the repeated neon sequence, an image of a flesh-and-blood boy copying the arm movement is superimposed. We watch his attempt to keep pace with the machine and its gradual failure. Is it an anticipation of the discussion about gender that has only recently updated feminist arguments?

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Specular and Who Blinked First start from mirroring and complementation as an argument. In the first, we observe a process of dialogue and reciprocity. A couple seeks to clarify their listening process. With each speech, the conversation becomes more complex without the pair slipping in the mutual understanding of their actions. The second video places a couple in front of a TV. We only see their reflections in the television set and we must pay attention to who caused the end of the game. As soon as one of the two blinks, the video fades to black and the game ends. Potentially a work of perception, Quem blinked first also activates the ability to look at the other, to dwell on someone's face, even though this encounter is mediated by video. This affective aspect is rounded off by De Aflictibus, a slide sequence of all kinds of bodily entanglements. Plastic experimentation that has become frequent in recent years, Letícia Parente rhythms images of body fusions with a phrase that looks more like a mantra chanted gravely. Current Brazilian contemporary production owes much to the investigation of this artist and her generation. The prevailing amnesia hinders the emergence of a poignant and non-naive experimentalism.

 

1. Gilles Lipovetsky's statement in Hypermodern Times, pp 122.

* Cristiana Tejo is director of the Museum of Modern Art Aloísio Magalhães