Miladys Parejo

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Miladys Parejo writes:

“My installations are transformations. Things that we see in one context are given a new place. My aim is to surprise, delight and provoke: to bring new life and ascribe new meanings to objects, shapes and textures. 

“This dialectic flows through my work. When I begin to work on a new installation, I search for an abstract concept that will serve as an integrating framework. I devote mental space for opportunities, ideas and possibilities to compete in a turbulent inner process. Eventually I settle on an orientating concept that becomes my purpose – the story that I want to tell. 

“Then I seek a form to realise my purpose using a language of fabrication, shape, form and texture. As I interact with the materials when making an installation I become closer to a deeper understanding of my own purpose. The story unfolds through interacting with the materials. 

“I sense the different kinds of life force in the natural and man-made products that I use.  The installation develops its own logic, taking directions that I did not expect. My greatest pleasure is to feel that my work is without artifice. I subsume myself to my purpose, give licence to my story to develop itself, allow my imagination to fly unheeded and respect the life force of my materials. From an act of will, things become significant in new and different ways.”

2021 INSTALLATION – An Extended Ocean of Hope

“It sounds dreamlike doesn’t it? It is a Dream. It is my personal Dream. I can not imagine life without Dreams.
I believe that Dreaming provides the energy for growth, to transform, to make things happen – it is a Road to Hope!
My ecological Dream is to avoid contributing to the destruction of our oceans. It is not my way to preach about this. But to do my part in everyday life. My hope is to see that environmental responsibility is rooted deeply in humanity.
My installation ‘An Extended Ocean of Hope’ does not ask you to share my Dream but invites you to search for your own Environmental Dream. With your Dreams and mine, little by little, our Dreams will help to write a new shipping forecast!
I invited the artist Linda Lieberman to participate in an Environmental dialogue as she has her own dream – a big one! It is to be an Ocean Champion!
Welcome our Environmental Dialogue!”
Miladys Parejo

An Extended Ocean of Hope

PREVIOUS WORK

Her 2019 Installation was ‘Collective Memories’ and it was in honour of Encounters’ 10th Anniversary.

2018 INSTALLATION – IN THE SAME BOAT, UP-SIDE-DOWN

For Encounters 2018 Edition an installation is being created by Miladys Parejo and Zsuzsanna Ardó. It will draw attention to inherent voids between manifesting a sane connection with the natural world and the prevailing cultural meme that sees the environment as, merely, an external landscape. Ardó questions herself, asking: “What are the dynamics between the (perceived) centrality of the self and the (perceived) peripheries of the planet…” Parejo seeks to deconstruct natural human responsibility and an alienated carelessness. The shared journey of these artists is realised by the installation ‘in the same boat, up-side-down’.

2017 INSTALLATION – EMPTINESS

Miladys Parejo 2017 installation in Encounters Art Space was entitled ‘Emptiness‘. It captured her sense that, currently, the World is upside-down. She said: ‘This insight has mobilised me. I feel impelled to express the impact of social forces acting whilst being devoid of compassion. As we transit from one state to another we experience a void. The past is no longer a roadmap for the future. There are empty places in our heads and hearts that are replete with uncertainties. The work “emptiness” reflects this state of unknowingness and how compassion has been threatened or lost’.

Technically this installation combined a historic artefact (a canoe from India) with projected digital images that used computer mapping to create a moving sea, accompanied by a relentless breach soundscape and projected words that read:

The World is turning from
The right-side up to upside down
It is falling apart
Its fabric is unravelling
Institutions are in turmoil
Givens and no longer given
Promises of hegemonic powers
Are discarded, like trash, casually.
Our diet of daily news is replete
With fracture, uncertainty and fear.
The chasm grows vast between
Economic and social realities.
Borders, once opening, are now closing
Wall making is today’s fashion.
Xenophobia is a badge of honour.
Freedom becomes a hazard.
Whispering voices praise control.
My artistic soul loathes confinement
We sink into a malaise
Of present and future emptiness.
Yet, I dream of light and hope
Breathing life into dark voids
Emptiness is the ruler now
But the power of hope endures.

The photographs below show the ‘Beyond the Limits’ installation.

 

2016 INSTALLATION – BEYOND THE LIMITS

Miladys’ 2016 Installation was entitled Beyond the Limits and is shown in the photgraphs below.

 

This installation included text (shown below) that captured the feeling tone of the artist as she conceptualised the work. The words were engraved on a metal plate as if they were a notice designed to endure for years.

 

The figure is present but in a cage. Wire restrains movement. Yet the mind is free.

 

 

 

OTHER WORK

 

Fibrous Form 2010

Looking inside the vitreous cavity of the eye”, “an Indian rope trick”, “defying gravity”

… these are a few of the views voiced by visitors to one of Brighton Festival’s Open Houses last summer.

They refer to the unusual installation of the Venezuelan artist, Miladys Parejo.

The piece transforms a single braid of weathered rope from a local fisherman’s boat into a sleeping snake that mutates into a deeply rooted sapling.

Its delicate twigs are held in balance with gnarled roots by a ramrod trunk, forming a tree that is both with and in defiance of nature.

The relocation of rope, roots, trees and snakes to the suburban sitting room challenges the viewers sensory experience, evoking a bedtime story – mildly unsettling yet nonetheless comforting.