Letícia Parente (Salvador, 1930- Rio de Janeiro, 1991).
A Doctor in Chemistry, Letícia Parente taught at the Federal University of Ceará and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Parente was one of the pioneers of Brazilian video art and participated from 1975 to 1991 in some of the most important video art exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. Her video Trademark (1975) has become an emblem of Brazilian video art. In 1973, Parente had her first solo exhibition, where she showed paintings and drawings at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Fortaleza, in the state of Ceará. With the installation Measures, in 1976, Parente took part in the first Art and Science exhibition in Brazil, which occurred at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. In 1981, she participated in the 16th International Biennial of São Paulo, presenting videos and mail-art.
Hanger, ironing board, basket, wardrobe, syringe, thread and needle, vaccination card, perforated tickets and stamps are some of Parente’s objects of daily use. A teacher and a chemist, a researcher and an artist, she deconstructs and reconstructs her daily life in an inaugural laboratory in Brazilian art. The artist generated a distinctive experimental repertoire by transiting between painting and printing, photography and audiovisual, video and installation, kinetic art and the most unusual objects with a scientific acuity. The importance of her work was recently shown at exhibitions such as: Radical Women: Latin-American Art, organized by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2017), Histories of Sexuality at MASP – São Paulo (2017), and Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, organized by the SAMMLUNG VERBUND Collection, Vienna (2017).