2021 Recipient of the Lynn and John Kearney Fellowship for Equity
Anna Parisi (b. 1984) is an Afro-Brazilian interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator who works primarily with collage, sculpture, performance, and video as mediums. Through her practice, she provokes, invokes, and evokes cathartic, visceral experiences around politics that invite engagement and allow space for self-reflection, vulnerability, and healing. Dismantling and opposing the vicious apparatuses of hegemonic patriarchy, colonialism, and systemic violence that have silenced, erased, and oppressed BIPOC heritage, livelihood, and futures inspires her artistic practice. Anna received a BA in Communications and Filmmaking from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons, The New School of Design in New York. Her work has been presented in The United States, Brazil, Europe, and Asia. She is the Leslie Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2020) recipient, the Taller Creative Capital (2019). Anna has presented her work twice at The Every Woman Biennial, The Real House, Akbank Sanat Turkey, EFA Project Space, [.BOX] Videoart project space Milan, The Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Hunter East Harlem Art Gallery, La Galleria La Mama, UrbanGlass, The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, Smack Mellon, Wesbeth Gallery, Artigo Rio, Musée D’Elysee in Lausanne, amongst others. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Parisi writes, “hegemonic patriarchy, colonialism, and systemic racism are vicious apparatuses that have silenced and oppressed BIPOC heritage, livelihood, and futures. Standing ground rooted in history, I raise awareness of disparities in a gesture for the dismantling of violence through empathy and love. I believe that only through empathy can we comprehend differing perspectives of life, living, and livelihood. Working across mediums to challenge the boundaries of what it means to be a black woman from a different culture and diaspora, I guide my research and practice by questions that address the traumatic experience and the effects surrounding women of color, with a keen interest in the systems put in place to oppress them. Racism and oppressive systems have always been veiled by a haze – not very explicit, but always a presence felt like an omnipresent fog. No one admitted that it floated in the air, nobody addressed it, nor talked about its thickness, the moments when it seeped in or dissipated. To speak about racism, we must speak about its lingering coexistence with silence – the silence of those that never speak up against it.”