GALERIE MIGHELA SHAMA is pleased to present I dream of rivers with a hundred mouths, the first Swiss solo exhibition by Regina Parra, featuring nine new works from the Brazilian-born, New York based artist.
Regina Parra traces the contours of radical desires and maps the hidden pathways of the unconscious, revealing its subtle strategies of resistance. Her work opens the doors to a world where mystery and enchantment reign, blending the real and the imagined with the aim to modify a pre-established social order by proposing different ways to explore the cosmology of the female body. The gallery is suffused with the scent of ritual offerings, reminiscent of the ocean’s embrace and the enduring resilience of ancient roots. As we step inside, time dissolves, and the everyday world fades away, inviting us to explore the hidden potential within the reality we think we know.
In I dream of rivers with a hundred mouths, a spellbinding narrative unfolds in the gallery space, led by Odara, an ethereal guide conjured from the whispers of ancestral goddesses. The paintings, each a powerful feitiço or amulet, pulse with both corporeal and natural energy. The works overflow with details of contorted bodies, lush fruits and embroidered silken textiles which draw us into a communion of spirit and flesh, in a celebration of feminine force. Their faces partially visible, the twisted figures are presented as active and vital. The carnal palette of lurid reds serves the artist to support a subversive assertion: that the female body is resistant to dominating forces and subjugating institutions.
Parra’s brushstrokes flow and pulse and in so doing create an almost bacchanalian vision of untamed energy, their rhythm capturing the essence of the Bacchants, those female worshippers of Dionysus who revelled in ecstasy and chaos, icons of unrepentant desire.
Their legacy, woven into the fabric of her paintings, challenges the constraints of patriarchal narratives and reclaims the female body as a site of liberation and power. Her works tremble with the dualities of temptation and restraint, love and domination, echoing the complex interplay of desire and fear that has haunted women through the ages.
Raised in Brazil, Parra’s roots play a significant role in shaping her work, drawing from the deep connection between people and the natural world. In her work, flesh and earth are one, and the boundaries of identity dissolve into a visceral celebration of existence.
Her figures, like shadows cast by flickering candlelight, reveal and conceal themselves in equal measure. They are both subject and object, embodying the paradox of the female experience — a presence that both captivates and unnerves. In Parra's work, bodies become landscapes, contorting and expanding in a dance of sensual liberation.
The sensuality that Parra evokes is untethered from the dictates of procreation and propriety. Desire is portrayed as essential to women's emancipation, necessary for survival, it ties us inextricably to nature, where the same life force flows through our veins and the rivers and trees. Unbinding the body from societal constraints and the oppressive burdens that restrain us, these works embrace the celebration of the body and eroticism as an act of resistance and self-reclamation.
Marco Galvan