EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists

Regina Parra

Regina Parra’s (b. 1984, Sao Paolo, Brazil) practice is mostly cross-disciplinary, for the past fifteen years she has been working between painting, video, performance, and choreography. Her production has been increasing scale over the years, and seeking an installation dimension, towards the creation of a total environment that encouraged her to work with collaborators in other fields of creativity, such as dance, music, costume design, and cinema. What brings all those elements together is theater, her first area of activity. Before entering the visual arts, she worked for Brazilian theater director Antunes Filho as his assistant director. This experience formed a deep connection with the performing arts, especially Greek tragedy, that remains with her.

Parra's research rests at the intersection of colonialism and capitalism and their lasting injustices and historical violence toward women. Much of her work is centered on the female social body and eroticism—as a place of affirmation and potential power. As a Latin artist from Brazil, where the rate of violence against women is heartbreakingly high, it is also vital for Parra to centralize a critical feminist position in her practice.

Her work has been shown at institutions such as the Jewish Museum, in New York (USA), MACBA—Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (SPA), Mana Contemporary in Chicago (USA), Americas Society in New York (US), Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (ITA), Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Ivry (FRA), and Museu Nacional de Lisboa (POR). Most recently, in April of 2023, she held a solo exhibition at Pinacoteca de São Paulo (BRA).

Parra was awarded the 3M Public Art Award (2018), SP-Art Fair Prize (2017), Joaquim Nabuco Foundation’s Video Award (2011) and Videobrasil Award (2011).

She was selected for the Monira Foundation Residency Program in 2021 and The Watermill Center Art Residency in 2020. In previous years she participated in the Annex_B's Residency program an Residency Unlimited (RU), both in New York. in New York.

Her work is part of the collection of institutions such as MACBA-Barcelona, MoMA, MASP, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, VideoBrasil, among others.