Documentaries
Bronx Museum, New York City, 2020
It’s Yours, José Parlá’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City, explores his personal connection to the Bronx and the influence of hip-hop culture on his artistic practice. Through layered surfaces, gestural calligraphy, and complex abstractions of memory, Parlá reflects the textures and rhythms of urban life while confronting the legacies of redlining, displacement, gentrification, and structural racism. Bringing together large-scale paintings, early sketchbooks and drawings, and site-specific works, the exhibition invites viewers to reconsider belonging, identity, and ownership in New York’s ever-changing neighborhoods.
University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Amistad América
The video documents José Parlá’s creation of Amistad América, a monumental mural commissioned by UT Austin Landmarks. Through layers of collage, richly textured surfaces, and gestural calligraphy, Parlá reflects Austin’s evolving landscape while honoring histories of friendship, migration, freedom, and cultural exchange. Bringing together Indigenous, African, and Latin American histories, the work envisions América as an interconnected hemisphere shaped by shared histories and human relationships.
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North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 2013
Nature of Language (2013) is a written painting commissioned by Snøhetta and is inspired by walks through Raleigh and encounters with its historical and cultural landscapes. Combining words, gestures, names, and hieroglyphic forms, it creates an abstract visual language—part diary, part poetic landscape. Rooted in calligraphic traditions, the work explores language as a reflection of our present and a bridge between people. This short film is presented by Parlá Studios, directed by Rey Parlá and Produced by Justin Wilkes and Jon Kamen.
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One Union of the Senses, New York, 2015
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