This experience took place on July 31, 2021 in Val Verde, California - a town 30 miles north of Los Angeles. The experience was presented as part of an immersive art and music experience called The Return. The Return was produced by Liminal Mass, our Los Angeles based art collective.
The journey up the mountain
Introducing the experience
The Dances
Behind the Scenes
Installing
Constructing the parangolés - making natural dyes from chlorophyll, beets and turmeric
detail shot
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The parangolés I create are inspired by the parangolés of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. Oiticica created art between the mid-1950s - 1980. He was part of the Concrete and Neo-Concrete movements in the 1950s and 60s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and later worked in New York City during the 1970s.
Parangolé is a slang term from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s. It had many meanings - among them; an unexpected situation or a dance party. Oiticica’s parangolés were capes made of materials such as fabric, nylon, and burlap. He believed that they were not complete until the viewer became a participant in the co-creation of an artwork by dancing with the parangolés.
This exhibit was created as a part of a journey of healing from my own traumatic sexual experiences. Between August 2020 - July 2021, I explored ways to liberate my body from these memories that were stored inside me. The parangolés were part of that process and I wanted to share this experience of physical liberation and physical connection with others.
Hélio Oiticica created the parangolés during an oppressive military dictatorship that lasted 20 years in Brazil. He believed that people could free their minds and bodies from oppression by moving in the parangolés. I created my first series of parangolés for The Return show to help people liberate themselves through movement and to physically connect to each other with respect and consent.
Each cape presents the participant with a new relationship with their bodies. I combined fabrics such as cotton, canvas and lace into one cape so each part of the cape would have a different weight. These different fabric weights open up new possibilities for how the participant moves. Each cape also has a modular design - meaning the participant can adjust the form of the cape and consequently, the way they move with it.
When I exhibited this work, I let participants know that each parangolé connects to each other with cords. I asked participants to verbally ask for consent from the other person before joining their parangolés together.
Parangolé P15 Cape 11, Eu Incorporo a Revolta (Embody Revolt) worn by Nildo of Mangueira, 1967
Hélio Oiticica with Parangolé P4, Cape 1, 1964
LIMINAL MASS EVENT PRODUCTION TEAM
Susana Pineda Correa
Nico Maldonado
Emily Loba
Juliana Romero
Sky Spiegel
Ben Scanlan
Kevin Moran
Gage Winthrop
Will White
Avalon Greenberg Call
Elisabeth Andreeff
Rest in peace Emily Loba