Between literature, performance, drawing, video and painting, contemporary Brazilian artist Paula Parisot has been building a solid trajectory from her hometown, Rio de Janeiro, and her city of choice, Buenos Aires. With an eminently eclectic approach, mixing and experimenting with different media, techniques, shapes and colours, perhaps her beginnings in writing can still be highlighted by a special attention to the importance of narratives and the multiplicity of expressions in the world.

Related to her literary work – of which it’s worth mentioning A Dama da Solidão, a finalist for the most traditional Brazilian honour in the field of literature, the Jabuti Prize – Parisot has already held several solo exhibitions, at institutions such as the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts in Rio de Janeiro, SESC in São Paulo and, in 2021, the 3rd edition of BienalSur – International Biennial of Contemporary Art from the South. Now, in a kind of new continuity of the aesthetic textures she has been exploring ever since, Parisot returns to Lisbon – a city she visited in 2018 as part of the DocLisboa festival, with the video series Crucigramista, América Invertida – to present Espejismos (Miragens), her first solo show in Portugal.

Curated by Victor Gordulho, the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes is covered in her vibrant paintings and installations, painted in blue and red, in a contrast that is woven and preserved through each of the rooms and the more than twenty pieces that make up the exhibition, many of which have never been seen before. With circular motifs, container shapes, dense patterns of detail and references to blood, sensuality, power and violence, Parisot alludes to the bodies and practices attributed to women, intending a dialogue with the history of Latin American feminist art.

Emphasising the indispensability of the word and the situated experience of being a woman in her artistic journey, the artist thinks of feminism today as a kind of vocabulary for her relationships. A language that makes it possible for her to connect her intimate memories with a collective experience and struggle. For this reason, in one of the works premiered at Espejismos (Mirages), entitled DesConcerto, she also invites other voices to think about – and break – the historical silencing of women in the specific context of the South of the Americas: Mexican photographer Tatiana Parcero, who recorded all the pro-abortion street manifestations in Argentina and Mexico; Argentinian actress Thelma Fardin, who shares her brutal story of a moment of rape; Brazilian activist Dani Santana; writer Cecilia Szperling and dancer and choreographer Leticia Mazur, both from Argentina.

Espejismos (Miragens), by Paula Parisot, is on show at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, with free admission, until 9 March 2024.