Lorna Dillon – författare

This book examines Chilean singer-songwriter, visual artist, poet and ethnographer Violeta Parra (1917–1967). Parra perceived her multiple outputs to be unified and continuous with her own self, demonstrating unequalled artistic agency in a hybrid creative space that she personally constructed and embraced via her poetry, music, and her visual art.The Visionary Praxis of Violeta Parra: Music, Poetry, and Art analyzes the hybrid artistic space of Chilean icon Violeta Parra (1917–1967). Lorna Dillon and Patricia Vilches examine the forces, connections, disruptions, and juxtapositions in the music that Parra compiled and composed; the art that she generated, and the poetry that she produced. The authors explore Parra’s profound desire to preserve and retain cultural tradition even as she blended, transformed, and embraced notions of modernity and the avant-garde.Parra was shaped by Ñuble, the region where she was born, and she absorbed the cultural diversity of Chile’s Central Valley. The vicissitudes and changes of her life inform her artistic creations in foundational ways. The authors explore how Parra’s artistic production matured during periods of relentless and sustained creative activity and intense effort which she viewed as continuous with, and inseparable from, her own representation of self.

The first book in English to consider the full extent of the accomplishments and influence the Chilean cultural icon, Violeta Parra.Violeta Parra was an extraordinary figure. She is best known for her contribution to the Latin American New Song movement and for her visual art, which was exhibited in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs of the Louvre gallery in 1964.Parra spent her early career singing Mexican songs in bars and researching traditional Chilean culture. All the different phases of Parra's life and work are discussed in this book, with analyses of her music, paintings, sculptures, embroideries (arpilleras), and poetry. Her exhibition in the Louvre gallery and the music venue that she set up before she died, La Carpa de la Reina, are also covered. Among the individual essays collected here are seminal works by Patricio Manns and Leonidas Morales, which have been translated into English for the first time. These works introduce the historical and biographical context for Parra's work. Other essays feature thelatest research and findings by Catherine Boyle, Ericka Verba, Paula Miranda, Serda Yalkin, Romina A. Green, and Lorna Dillon. The book also includes an interview with Violeta Parra's brother, the influential poet Nicanor Parra and a Foreword by Marjorie Agosín.Lorna Dillon earned her PhD at King's College London. She is currently a network facilitator and associate lecturer at the University of Kent.

Parra exhibited in open-air art fairs, museums and cultural centres as well as in prestigious venues such as Museu de Arte Moderna do Brasil (the Museum of Modern Art in Brazil) and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Paris.