XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Essentially Brazilian: Letícia Parente’s Trademark

• In Event: Art, Race, and the Construction of Space in Contemporary Brazil

Abstract

In her black-and-white video Marca registrada (Trademark, 1975), Brazilian artist Letícia Parente sews with needle and black thread the sentence “MADE IN BRASIL” on the sole of her left foot. By stitching the name of her country onto her skin, Parente denounces the experiences of living under Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985). With Marca registrada, she also created a now canonical artwork within national narratives of contemporary art, as evidenced in the references to this work in the covers of two foundational books on the history of video art from Brazil, Arlindo Machado’s Made in Brasil: três décadas do vídeo brasileiro, which reproduces Parente’s statement in its title, and Christine Mello’s Extremidades do video, whose cover image is a still of Parente’s stitched foot in Marca registrada. Based on this single artwork Parente is today recognized in Brazil as an established artist and a pioneer of video art. However, besides Marca registrada, Parente’s work on collage, installation, and Xerox and mail art has only been exhibited sporadically and remains largely unexplored.

This paper examines why Marca registrada came to stand for the entirety of Parente’s artistic production and what have been the curatorial and historiographical forces that have established it as Parente’s singular contribution to the history of art from Brazil. By considering Marca registrada within Parente’s body of work, I argue that Parente’s art historical contribution goes beyond the medium of video and opens new avenues into the intertwined relationship between art, politics, and science in 1970s Brazil. Furthermore, I argue that a historiographical approach to this singular work reveals its centrality for the reconceptualization of citizenship both during and after Brazil’s military dictatorship specifically as this artwork was exhibited at MAM¬–RJ and MAC USP, two museums whose buildings are consider paradigms of Brazilian modern architecture.

Author

• Paulina Pardo Gaviria, California State University, Long Beach