Paula Parisot’s exhibition at the Hélio Oiticica Center in Rio de Janeiro ended recently, but the story told by her work cannot come to an end. At least not while there remains on this earth a single trace of her art, because everything in it is an urgent voice, a testimony, and a demand for dignity that concerns us all.
I often joke that my heroes have suffered too much and that, because of this, I see hardships as proof of a great destiny. Paula would not make a film; she would make an entire film festival. Her life is one of profound upheaval, a walk along the edge of the precipice, an extraordinary resilience that one could never have imagined from her beautiful and delicate presence.
Everything in the artist’s work exists through the right to biography. The right to be who one is, with one’s memory and one’s body in what remains of the present day. It is fascinating — even more so for me as a writer — that an art form can be entirely devoted to claiming biography, as if it were not something inherently granted to the artist, as if being someone were not already guaranteed to those who create.
At a time when identity is increasingly constructed as a virtual avatar, an imaginary projection, what Paula Parisot does is the opposite: she demands that imagination bring forth the testimony of reality. She uses everything she can imagine to reveal the most real of dramas. To care for her grief, to care for her children, to care for her indelible wonder.
I deeply hope that her paintings, those incredible and labyrinthine drawings, will come to Portugal. So that we may see how justice is also made through the refusal of silence, and how wonder is also made of knowing how to endure suffering without ever ceasing to seek a better future. We will see how Paula Parisot, perhaps without having planned it beforehand, crossed through the worst in order to reach a great destiny. And we are all implicated in this, because, as Argentinians say, “if it happened to one, it happened to everyone.” This is what justice calls upon: care for each individual, so that everyone may be cared for. So that everyone may know they are cared for as a matter of principle.”
