The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers presents the Alumni Achievement Award to Scholastic Awards alumni who’ve forged their own paths in their careers. Since the beginning of the Awards, alumni have been leaders in their fields, from artists and writers to astronomers and filmmakers. This year, we are thrilled to honor award-winning contemporary artist and exceptional alumnus José Parlá.

José Parlá (b.1973) creates paintings and multidisciplinary works based on his interest in hybrid forms of abstraction that visually translate urban life. Drawing inspiration from various mediums, such as calligraphy, music, dance, deteriorated walls, torn and weathered advertisements, and photography, his works poetically challenge ideas about language, politics, identity, and how we define places and spaces. Parlá works with mark-making by incorporating the body’s gestures in his unique textures and calligraphic poems from stream of consciousness. This form of abstract storytelling functions as a disruption of the status quo in visual culture.  

Parlá was born to Cuban parents in Miami, FL, and is based in Brooklyn, NY. He studied at Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in Savannah, GA, and at New World School of the Arts and Miami Dade College (MDC), both in Miami, FL.  

Solo exhibitions of Parlá’s work have been organized at institutions such as The Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Gana Art Center, Seoul, South Korea; Istanbul74, Istanbul, Turkey; HOCA Foundation, Hong Kong, China; Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, NY; National YoungArts Foundation, Miami, FL; Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas, TX; and Whitworth University, Spokane, WA.  

Permanent public art projects include large-scale commissions such as: Far Rockaway Writer’s Library, a collaboration between Snøhetta and Parlá, Far Rockaway, NY; Amistad América, University of Texas at Austin, TX; ONE: Union of the Senses, ONE World Trade Center, New York, NY; Nature of Language, a collaboration with Snøhetta, North Carolina State University’s Hunt Jr. Library, Raleigh, NC; Diary of Brooklyn, Barclays Center, Brooklyn, NY; Gesture Performing Dance, Dance Performing Gesture, BAM Fisher, Brooklyn, NY; The Bridge and The Names that Live and Sometimes Fade While Time Flies, Concord City Place, Toronto, Canada.  

Select group exhibitions and biennials featuring his work include: The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Reflections, Gana Art Center; Glasstress, Fondazione Berengo, Venice, Italy; Beyond the Streets, New York, NY; yasiin bey: Negus, Brooklyn Museum; Victors for Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Post No Bills: Public Walls as Studio and Source, Neuberger Museum of Art; Seeing | Saying: Images and Words, Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, Davidson, NC; and JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City, Havana Cuba, The Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba.  

Parlá’s work is in several public collections, including Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; The British Museum, London; The Buffalo AKG Museum, Buffalo, NY; El Espacio, Miami, FL; POLA Museum of Art, Hakone, Japan; Neuberger Museum of Art; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba.  

Parlá has received numerous awards and honors, including a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship; Hirshhorn Museum Artist x Artist honoree; National Young Arts Foundation Award; Americans for the Arts’ National Art Award and Public Art Network Award; MDC Alumni Hall of Fame inductee; Brooklyn Arts Council honoree; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Grand Prize; and Best Documentary Short and Best U.S. Premiere, Heartland Film Festival, for Wrinkles of the City: La Havana.  

Parlá has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world and has been featured in publications and media such as The New York Times, CBS News Sunday Morning, Artforum, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, Dazed, BOMB, Whitewall, Juxtapoz, CULTURED, EL PAÍS, Vogue, Financial Times, Time Sensitive, and many more. 

Parlá received his Scholastic Award for art in 1989. 

Featured image: José Parlá painting ONE: Union of the Senses, commissioned by One World Trade Center. Photograph by Jeff Goldberg / ESTO.