Regina Parra draws on mythology and pagan symbology across her paintings, performances, and installations to reclaim the female body from patriarchal narratives. Her recent series reflects a profound engagement with both Greek and Latin American mythologies, focusing on states of ecstatic liberation and female power.
In these works, ripe fruits—figs, pomegranates, plums—are submerged in milk, split open, and rendered in lush tones of vermilion and burgundy. Their voluptuous forms echo the curves of the human body, often juxtaposed with the artist’s own hands, punctuated by navels or fibrous leaves—sensual markers that blur the boundary between fruit and flesh. This sensuous interplay evokes the porous body’s experience of overflowing, of losing itself in presence—a temporary continuity with the whole, just before returning to one’s own edges. There is, perhaps, a quiet suggestion of the relationship between near-death and the little death, the erotic as a threshold experience.
Parra refers to this visual language as Pagan Eroticism, viewing them as an act of offering and sacrifice. To witness an offering—or to make one—is to give something alive over to its unmaking. It becomes, above all, a celebration of being alive, of having boundaries to dissolve and reform. In this way, Parra’s compositions breathe new life into the traditions of still life and classical tragedy. Here, the erotic emerges not as spectacle, but as a radical act: a celebration of the female body, its pleasure, its freedom, and its vivid insubordination.
Her work has been shown at institutions such as the Jewish Museum, in New York (USA), MACBA-Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (SPA), Mana Contemporary in Chicago (USA), Americas Society in New York (US), Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (ITA), Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Ivry (FRA), and Museu Nacional de Lisboa (POR).
In 2023, Parra held a solo exhibition at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (BRA). Last year, she held exhibitions at Lyles & King Gallery in New York and Galerie Mighela Shama in Geneva.
She was awarded the 3M Public Art Prize (2018), the SP-Arte Prize (2017), the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation Video Prize (2011), and the Videobrasil Prize (2011). In 2021 she was selected for the Monira Foundation Residency Program; and, in the previous year, for the residency program at The Watermill Center. She was also an artist-in-residence at Annex_B and Residency Unlimited, both in New York, and at Pivô in São Paulo.
Her work is featured in the collections of institutions such as ICA_Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) Barcelona; Museum of Art of Sao Paulo (MASP); Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo; Figueiredo Ferraz Institute; Joaquim Nabuco Foundation; Museum FAMA, VideoBrasil, among others.
