Catalina Parra

Catalina Parra (born May 9, 1940) is a self-taught Chilean artist, famous for her works It's Indisputable (1992) and Imbunches (1977). Parra is a strong feminist, humanist, and advocates for social and political change through her art. "Art doesn't have a gender", she says. Early life Catalina Parra was born in Santiago, Chile to famous poet Nicanor Parra and his wife. Violeta Parra, her aunt, was also in the arts - she was a visual artist. Nicanor Parra, however, was most influential to Catalina and offered his liberal and political views on many subjects, which is primarily how Catalina views many subjects today. Catalina moved to Germany in 1968 when she was twenty-eight, but moved back to Chile five years later in 1973 during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled until 1990. She then trekked to New York City in 1980 due to his oppression and has lived there ever since. These locations have shaped her artistic ability and style through the political, social, and economic movements that occurred while she was residing in each area. Career With a career that spanned for a total of five decades, her many works have been influenced by a great number of events, personal occurrences, and movements in each of the places she has visited throughout the years. During Parra's movement to Germany in the late sixties, her works were influenced by the Fluxus Movement. Following the Fluxus Movement's way of thinking, she created Imbunches, which was a collection of mixed media artworks on a display board. This piece of art represented censorship and the government's use of terror as a method of control. Chile, her native country, was under a dictatorship at this time, and this influenced her way of thinking as well. Parra's move back to Chile under this dictatorship was extremely significant as well; her artwork combines her concern for Chile's political history with the Fluxus Movement's ideals. Her return to Chile found her joining with the popular artists' guild at the time, avanzada, who popularized the use of mixed media featuring articles about current events based on their feelings/morals concerning the Chilean government. While she lived in New York City, Parra taught high school to those who didn't have access to art in the New Museum—illiterate people, pregnant teenagers, and other people who didn't have many privileges.