The House of  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 Xeroxes. The first series, entitled the house, consists of 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 artist's image and life. The second xerox, from the same series, shows a drawing of a house in the ground plan. In one of the rooms, we read the place to look for the direction and we see the space full of letters N as compass signs, North, direction. In the room below, we see an arrow indicating seven alternatives against loneliness and the drawing of seven small rectangles. In the neighboring environment, we read desired dialogues and drawings of hands in gestures that point to many directions. In the room above, it says comings and goings, twists and turns and the field full of opposite 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 dark we read sun always available. In the third xerox, the house is shown in a side section, Letícia draws a clothesline with herbs, a row of cloud tiles, gas pipes and the floor rests on 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 sensitive fabulation of the artist who, between comings and goings, expands her 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 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.

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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's an almost school-like drawing of a house, one of those seen in school primers, scratched on the checkered sheet. Imprisoning this shape we see four lines that build a box around the drawing. Beside the box a caption - At the bottom of the coffin in 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 go to sleep on the roof
The rain will fall on the roofs
The dust will come down on the roofs
The sun will hit the rooftops
The wind will sweep across the roofs
The size of this roof is a multiple of tiles
And makes up the space for our bodies...

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

House, which house?

A house is a shell, a membrane from 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 gnawing secrets of time
It will be like a blanket......

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The text folds and unfolds the artist's poetic sensibility. From body to body, from home to the 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 Letícia Parente's work, the body is a tangle where a nest is discovered.

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I closet myself
I closet myself
I closet myself
Tell me what I contain
I closet myself
Comings and goings. twists and turns
I sat alone. I sat with. seats with
I consume the color of the fruits and the flavors of time....

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Closed closet. Closet with black clothes, closet with white clothes, closet with shoes hanging and stacked, chest x-ray closet, onion closet, closet with chairs, closet with crumpled papers, closet with all the kids in it. These are the photographic images of the audiovisual Cabinet of me. Once again, the artist creates a repertoire of objects used in the house, a closet that she keeps, that accumulates, that arranges. Separating and classifying are, therefore, domestic operations that, in the exaggeration of the artist's montages, dissect the details of a reinvented everyday life.

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

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in

In is inside, it's smaller, cozy. Inside the closet fits a lifetime. The shopping, the clothes, the full, the empty, the inside, the outside. “Tell me what I contain”

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

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Country, which country?

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

Edifício Brasil was the name of the building where he lived in Ipanema when he made the video Made in Brasil, in 1975. A sum of varied places like a single Brazil embroidered by hand on the soles of his feet. This variety of meanings kept the video as an icon of a time, a people, a nation in the construction and deconstruction of what the words made in announce. Is the body then a product? Is the country a body? Is the hand a machine? Made in Brasil points to the national acquired as a mark of what is ours and cannot fail to be. A mark that hurts in the agony of the body that receives it without moving, unscathed 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, which body is this?

“a woman's body written all over with her fissures, her gaze, her arms”1 In the second series of Xérox, Women, words delineate the body. Eyes in the eyes, curves in the curves, shadows in the shadows, chin contour, 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 things. Letícia walks the opposite way: words are things.

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womb of the soul
womb of space

Face
what face is this?

The face is a map, says the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The face is the interface of a body that does not communicate. The face confuses, deceives. We don't see our face. We see every part of the body except the face. The face is construction. A fragment with another fragment with another fragment. Mouth, nose, eyes. Body openings sealed by the artist. So what face is this? It's a drawing and not a mask, because it doesn't hide, it shows.

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 feminine stereotypes. Letícia turns the stereotype inside out with the same signs used in the construction of the clichés: the objects for female use are subverted and even the faces are cut out and edited as models of use in situations to be delineated, such as, for example, the happy smile, the sentimental or generous mouth. Collage and montage are processes used in the artist's xerox and postcard art work. Fashion Strategies. The mode of construction and the means of propagating it disturb the media circuit by deconstructing and reconstructing its operations.

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

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

The House

Letícia Parente, artist, chemist and teacher, was married for 20 years and had 5 children, 14 siblings and many friends. In addition to knowing the so-called household tasks, such as cooking, sewing and taking care of children and husband, the Bahian girl 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 University Catholic of Rio de Janeiro. All this in Brazil in the 60s and 70s.

The videos that the artist produced between 1975-82 show images that do not leave home. Letícia Parente weaves a subtle thread between the house, the body and the sensitive territory of art. With a needle and thread, she sews Brazil on the sole of her foot, with an iron she remakes the positions between boss 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 carried out 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.

Letícia does not decorate the everyday moments she chooses. She makes the days 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 resides the tension that characterizes the work of art, one eye watching what is, while the other insists on what is not.

Wireless phone

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 the game between friends, in which a word or phrase is passed from ear to ear, the joy and relaxation of the group is what most impresses and contaminates those who attend this inaugural moment. Cordless phone registers this meeting that started Brazilian video art.

Preparation I

In front of the mirror, the artist inverts her own image, but it is not a top-down view, it is a question of blindness instead of vision. Letícia carefully, like a woman preparing her makeup before leaving the house, takes care of every part of her face. Glue a band-aid to the mouth first and outline the lips on top. Then, also over each eye, repeat the operation. The design on the adhesive plaster remakes what it hides. Speechless and sightless, the woman continues to ruffle her hair and fixes her constructed, wide-open eye on the mirror and then leaves the mirror and the bathroom.

in

How many times have we hung clothes in the closet? And how many times do we not want to lock ourselves in the house or close the bedroom door? Isolation and closure lead us to feelings of anguish, but also to tranquility and peace. The artist mixes perceptions and objects. Why not hang together with the laundry? Why don't we feel clothed? Why not stop feeling? Why not keep what we feel? She doesn't seem to think, she's just doing one more thing for the day: in everyday life, it's one thing after another. When closing the closet, the artist preserves herself with time.

Sons

Letícia includes her children in several jobs and in different ways. André and Angela are shown in Mirror and Who Blinked First? In both videos, the focus is on the exchange, of speeches and looks, the relationship between the two, almost like a joke or a bet, a game between brothers appropriated by a precise, conceptual and poetic framing of the artist.

In O homem do arm e o armo do homem, once again Letícia records her son in the game of simulating the same movement in the neon advertisement for a gym. This video is co-authored with the son, who also photographs other videos of his mother.

The children, scattered around the house, talking, eating, sleeping, talking, are the origin of the house.

In the audiovisual Cabinet of me, Letícia puts all her children – André, Ângela, Lia, Cristiana and Pedro – in the closet and photographs them.

task 1

Letícia lies down on the ironing board in front of her maid, who calmly irons her dressed mistress, with the same attention to detail as someone who irons an extended and flat garment. The artist is as calm as an empty outfit, she doesn't move, she doesn't complain, she stays. She is any outfit, any day. There is no indifference, it is just another task accomplished. There is no tension in the relationship between the boss and the maid, just a mute complicity.

North East

The artist tries to take two snakes wrapped in a sheet inside a leather suitcase, to the sound of Caetano's song, On the day I came away. The title and the music take us to a retreating Northeast, to the wear and tear of the drought and the scarce provisions 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 shape reinforces the theme's drama, almost interpreted by the dragging of the suitcase and the artist's face hidden by her hands in the last image.
 
Trademark

The feet walk and then the legs that cross show the sole of one of the feet to the stationary camera. The hand appears with the thread and the needle that sews the words Made in Brasil. The stitches are firm as if on stretched fabric. Without any hesitation Letícia weaves the state of Brazil into her own skin, a country made out of here, foreign property, the Brazil of 1975, foreign to ourselves. 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.

Preparation II

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

of affliction

The voice repeats the prayer. Well for nobis, well for nobis, well for nobis. With each repetition, the black and white photograph of hands intertwined in prayer is replaced by another one, which also prays. The artist's voice is hoarse and asks Ora pro nobis. In this prayer, light comes and goes. In prayer there is no prayer, there are no requests or thanks, just the litany that whispers, that moves, that afflicts. In the repetition of gestures and prayers there is only the feeling of prayer.

Letícia Parente looks at the house. Some of the first videos of Brazilian art emerged from the remoteness and proximity of this gaze, short videos, acute, brief as intimate reports, which go beyond the daily life of the acts they shelter by pointing to what is on the other side of these actions, the reception of poetry which is repeated throughout the day.

Installation

Measurements

A set of stations to measure blood type, attention, vision, resistance to pain, body type, weight, height, respiration, secret measurements. After collecting the data, the visitor goes on to display  other data previously collected from newspapers and publications such as the book of records and lists the information. Movement timed by a voice that insists on counting the time that passes. The summons by a participative audience and the humor in the information on the records generate a new environment in Brazilian art. A veritable 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 as one more product with brands and standards, tested like a machine to breathe and resist.

interactive art
Ra Brazil

In 1984, Letícia creates a flat structure with transparent test tubes composing the map of Brazil. At the visitor's touch, the color of the liquid inside the tubes changes through chemical reactions. For the second time Brazil is part of the title of a work by the artist. Now in the form of an interactive object powered by the spectator's energy. The artist experiences 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 designed by an action that becomes interior to the work.

In this experience Letícia creates an interaction based on gesture, without touch there is no change, color or movement. It is an interactive work that builds on the relationship with the viewer. The artist who already had in the installation Measurements summoned this spectator to participate in the process of the work, now includes his action as part of the work.

By post

Letícia Parente tries to send herself by post, as a work of postal art, to participate in the XVI Bienal de São Paulo, in 1981. As the experience is not allowed, the artist records her own face stamped with the address of the Bienal on video.

The artist also participates in Brazilian Postal Art by sending her Xérox series. Some of them described above.

Mail, telephone, newspaper, television, video were means used by the artist as a way of problematizing the means themselves, and not only as vehicles of communication, but also of art. Letícia is a true multimedia artist, not only because she appropriates them as a means of expression, but because she questions the limits between them, relating them.

At least a third of Letícia Parente's work on video is missing. Green desire (1983) showed a boy in a coconut tree and hunger in the city, Round the globe (1981) a journalist with the newspaper O Globo in ritualistic gestures, Where (1978 in co-authorship with André Parente) recorded television transmitting the image of what was being recorded as real-time looped feedback. 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 presence of the artist, who short-circuits the communication system foreseen for two-way communication and which the artist transforms into a single direction, generating another form of loop, now around herself. In Pontos (1975), a drawn and cut pen is sewn onto the index finger and with it a point is inscribed on the paper. Once again, the artist insists on the gesture of writing with a 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 only exist in reports, such as that of her daughter Cristiana Parente, who recorded mixing colors in a blender while making a work that was also lost.

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

1 Testimony by the artist to the FAAP Research Institute – Setor Arte
Rio, June/1985