Catalina Parra, Coming your way, 1991
The method of stitching that appears in the collage works of Chilean artist Catalina Parra has been a defining element of her creative process since early in her artistic career. Her collage work is made from cut up newspapers, rearranged and reconstructed through the application of red stitches. She adopted the practice of stitching after learning of an old Araucanian myth that tells the story of a tribe that would sew shut all of the orifices of a creature so that evil spirits could not escape. The creature is referred to as the imbunche and its ideological significance manifests itself throughout Parra’s work. Stemming from this tale, stitching has become a metaphor for grotesque manipulation, suppression and censorship. On the other hand, the artist also describes the act of sewing in terms of its relationship with feminine handiwork. The stitches can be seen as representations of the process of mending or restoring that which has been torn or destroyed. Stitching is not only just an act of restoration but also is an act of creation: stitching together parts in order to form a whole. Parra states that often women possess a natural tendency to fix or restore things in order to form a new, more beautiful reality. The use of stitching in her work is, therefore, simultaneously violent and generative. It is a method of reinvention that questions the reality that we are given on a daily basis through authoritative methods of communication, represented in her pieces by the newspaper.
The use of the stitch is an example of Parra’s own language of political critique, one that is not based on literal depictions or obvious imagery but delicately and ambiguously implied in her work. While she was living in Germany she was very impressed and influenced by the work of John Heartfield whose political collages of photographic images portrayed a strong anti-fascist message during the time of the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. She says her work as has been informed by the sensibility found in Heartfield’s work but her experience as an artist living and working in various countries around the globe, under various political conditions, has inevitably led to the development of a different language of critique. While working in Chile during the dictatorship of Agusto Pinochet, Parra learned that through the subtle use of materials and juxtapositions she could produce work in a language that served as camouflage; her strong oppositional message about the Pinochet regime, encoded within the materials she used, was not detected by government authorities. “In order to speak of the pain and suffering caused by the silencing of democracy, the artist invented a language of double meaning, an esoteric language that unsuspicious drew upon the theme of the myth of the imbunche.”(1) Her work created a new space, a new reality where she was free to express her feelings of sorrow and defiance towards the harsh political reality that her home country was facing. At a time when artists, writers and intellectuals were all being thrown in prison for their rebellious stance against the dictatorship, Parra’s work was being openly exhibited in Chile. Proof that she was successful in stitching together a new space of contestation when one could not be found elsewhere.
Catalina Parra, It's Indisputable, 1992
In Parra’s newspaper collages, she does not directly state a particular position nor does she explicitly provide an obvious message; she delicately alters text so that the meaning is only slightly skewed. She cuts and inserts other images. In many cases, she removes the product being advertised in order to widen the viewer’s scope of interpretation. Parra’s method of double meaning referred to above effectively exposes a similar method of hidden meaning that is employed within the original newspaper material that she utilizes in her collages. Parra exposes the hypocritical and ironic messages of headlines such as “The Human Touch, the Financial Edge” and “It’s Undisputable.” What she does is dissect and re-contextualize them in a manner that challenges the original, underlying meaning behind them. In order to expose the hidden messages of the media that she uses, Parra employs similarly ambiguous and carefully meditated artistic language. Therefore, from a certain perspective, the artist builds her critique by emulating the methods of the media that is the subject of her critique.
Creating work that mimics the language of the object being critiqued echoes the theoretical ideas of Guy Debord. Debord’s concept of the society of the spectacle is in fact related to Parra’s vision of our modern lives within a capitalist and consumer-obsessed society. Debord’s concept of spectacular society is defined as a society that is so highly dominated by images that it is no longer able to identify true reality from the reality superficially produced by the media. Debord describes the spectacle, as “both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality.”(2) Debord, like Parra in her collages, stresses that to analyze and challenge the spectacle we are required to utilize the language of the spectacle itself.
It seems evident that both Parra and Debord share the perspective that we cannot find a space outside of the dominant and omnipresent mode of communication from which to stage a revolt; such a space does not exist. The revolt, then, must come from within. From Parra’s collage work she suggests that if we can subvert the reality that we are supposed to accept as real, if we can learn to question and critique the flow of information, images and language that we receive, we may then be able to begin to construct or stitch together a new, more aware and conscious reality; one that is perhaps more beautiful.
1. Julia P. Herzberg, Catalina Parra in Retrospect: Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York, February 6-April 4, 1992, Bronx, N.Y.: The Gallery, 1991, 13.
2. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1994, 7.
Jailee Rychen is a recent graduate of NYU's Museum Studies graduate program, and a New York-based independent curator and art professional. Her collected writings for TheExaminer.com can be found here.
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