Justicia visual: La obra de Pratibha Parmar

“Visual Justice: the Early Work of Pratibha Parmar” was an exhibition of the early work of Pratibha Parmar, curated by Rebecca Close and held at the LGBT cultural center in Barcelona in association with Barcelona Council and Intercultural Program. In Sari Red (1988), Emergence (1986), Reframing Aids (1987) and Khush (1991) – the artist’s first works in film and video and those displayed here – a series of artistic strategies inspired by her activism in the antiracist and black feminist movements in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s can be appreciated. These works ironize banal stereotypes and visual tropes; interrupt image distribution cycles; appropriate media and take hold of processes of mediation. It’s not just that images can foster social change, it is that the very material of justice (and injustice) is technological and visual in character. The concept of ‘visual justice’, coined by Pratibha Parmar, refers to this disappropriation of visuality: a queer diaspora strategy for generating networks of solidarity, art and pleasure.