In her first solo exhibition at Galeria Millan, "Por Que Tremes, Mulher?" (Why are you trembling woman?), curated by Moacir dos Anjos, artist Regina Parra brings together nine paintings, a series of drawings, installations, and a video. The new works reflect a kind of "archeology of violence". Not the brutality that is highlighted in the media on a daily basis, but that which is often behind it: the veiled violence in everyday relationships. The invisible hostility that functions as a daily tool to subdue the other, especially when that other is in a more fragile position. And every kind of other - woman, immigrant, black, Indian - fights against its own reduction to stereotypes: the domesticated woman, the servile immigrant, the "nega maluca", the good savage.
In the sound installation "Yes, Sir", for example, all the characters repeat the same phrase ("- Yes, sir.") as a strategy for survival. Or, in the oil paintings, they are reduced to decorative statues of slave farms in São Paulo, eternally servile and smiling. And they bow their heads in Parra's set of red drawings. In the artist's view, the survival strategy can be seen as a means of resistance. The decorative blackamoor sculptures portrayed in her oils on paper are no longer "exotic ornaments", but reveal the brutality of their origin. The crestfallen figures depicted there are perhaps finally raising their heads.
In the paintings of the series that gives the show its name, "Por que Tremes, Mulher? In them, violence functions as a point of intersection between nature and culture. These same landscapes are the habitat of the bird Lipaugus vociferans, known as Capitão-do-Mato. The nickname comes from its strident song, which, in the past, was used to denounce the movement of runaway slaves. This kind of "antiphable" gains new meaning in the group of paintings "Aquele Que Grita" (He Who Cries) and also in the video "Capitão-do-Mato", filmed in the Amazon and featuring an excellent bird imitator as a character. And in the neon installation, the phrase "Stay Terrified" is, at the same time, the reverse and the mirror of the sentence "Become Terrible". An essentially contemporary dilemma, from a time when violence against women is in the spotlight, of fierce reaction to waves of immigration and increasing inequality. A time when the other is still persecuted.