Vine 100

The lady had an eye. It was 1938 when Gabriela Mistral said that a 24-year-old young man was “the future poet of Chile.” Who was he talking about? From Nicanor Parra, neither more nor less. But the references did not stop there, because Parra also mentioned the poet. For example in these verses of Epitaph: “I am Lucila Alcayaga / alias Gabriela Mistral / first I won the Nobel / and then the National Prize.”

Now their names are linked again. On September 5, the anti-poet will turn 100 years old and the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center (GAM) will celebrate it with Parra 100, his first visual biography that, at the same time, is more than that. Photos, videos, documentaries and recordings make up the exhibition in which Parra himself has collaborated.

Telluric and intimate, the root of this exhibition sinks to the tectonic layers that shook in February 2010, collapsing the library that the poet had in his house in La Reina and, in the process, revealing an old suitcase that kept photos, many of them never seen outside the inner circle of the famous Parra family.

What was in the suitcase? Moments from his childhood in Chillán, from his student period in Chile and outside the country, from his trips, from his acquaintances, from his wives, from his children, from those close to him. That is the beginning of Parra 100, but not all.

The exhibition exhibits a total of 112 images, 80 from the family archive and 32 from prominent photographers such as Sergio Larraín, Hans Ehrmann, Paz Errázuriz, Claudio Pérez, Luis Poirot and Jorge Brantmayer, among others. The curators of the exhibition, the editor Sofía Le Foulon and the grandson of the anti-poet, Cristóbal Ugarte, also known as Tololo, selected 52 of them to exhibit in large format and 60 for a timeline: Parra, the first 100 years.

In addition to home photos and portraits, the exhibition will allow us to see Parra sharing time and space with Chilean writers such as José Donoso, Pablo Neruda, Francisco Coloane and Delia Domínguez;  foreigners such as Allen Ginsberg, Tomas Transtromer, Ernesto Sábato, Nicolás Guillén and James Laughlin, and personalities such as Richard Nixon's wife and, of course, Violeta Parra.

The exhibition also considers the recording of the readings that Parra himself did in the '70s of the poems There is a happy day, Self-portrait and Defense of Violeta Parra, along with a recording of El hombre imaginario, which he made in the '90s.

Parra will also appear in motion. Videos recorded by his family in their homes in La Reina, Isla Negra and Las Cruces will be shown; records of known interviews and an unpublished one given in 1983. In addition, the documentaries Cachureo, Guillermo Cahn; Demolition materials, by Sergio Marras; The Imaginary Man and Nicanor Parra's Class, both by Marcelo Porta.