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SLOW PROCESSING:

WORKS BY ANNA PARISI
JULY 3 - AUGUST 1

OPENING RECEPTION: JULY 10, 5-8pm 




Exploring the discomfort of growth while coming to terms with the ambiguity inherent in life. 



CURATED BY SOPHIE GILL + ADRIENNE ALBRO-FISHER 
as part of A.P.E.’s Emerging Curator Program



Across a series of paintings, prints, and the artist’s personal sketchbooks, Parisi stumbles into adulthood and searches for meaning with the understanding that “meaning” is a constantly shifting goalpost. In this debut solo exhibition, Slow Processing brings together a body of work that explores the discomfort of growth while coming to terms with the ambiguity inherent in life. 

Faces in Parisi’s work oscillate between posed, almost mask-like facades and intimate glimpses of retrospection, as some stare at the viewer head on while others avert their gaze. Some inch closer, crowding the canvas and the viewer's personal space, while others remain at a distance. The characters interact minimally with their environment, figures detached from their own place, while the backdrops themselves remain anonymous in the absence of unusual or exceptional identifiers, occasionally devoid of any visual information entirely. Parisi concentrates her attention and care into crafting figures whose smiles, glances, and grimaces are amplified against a less descriptive background. 

Anna Parisi’s paintings are fantastical invitations into the uncanny; narrativizing intimate depictions of discomfort. Drawing from Japanese alternative manga and heta-uma ("bad-good") art, Parisi incorporates unusual and cartoonish visual traditions that have become increasingly significant to her understanding of her own cultural identity. This engagement with personal and cultural history deepens the exhibition's exploration of growth, ambiguity, and the shifting process of self-understanding. This particular body of work typifies the precariousness inherent to early adult life. With faces that contort, stretch, or disguise, Slow Processing asks viewers to investigate their own lives, the meaning they imbue them with, and their relationship to the unknown.


ANNA PARISI is a Brooklyn-based painter, printmaker, and community organizer. Her creative practice permeates her life. When she isn’t making her own pieces, she’s facilitating others’ art making through workshops and after school classes as well as connecting with her community through non-profit work. Parisi grew up in Columbus, GA and studied studio art at Clark University in Worcester, MA. 






A.P.E.'s programming is made possible in part by sustained support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.