Featuring Interviews with KAWS, Hank Willis Thomas, Lee Quiñones, and Other Art World Luminaries. Premieres May 24, 2025.
(MIAMI, FL — May 15, 2025) — Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is pleased to announce the premiere of “Marking the Way Home,” a powerful short documentary chronicling artist José Parlá’s artistic journey, his life-threatening battle with COVID-19, and his triumphant return to Miami through his first major hometown exhibition. The film is produced in-house by PAMM and accompanies José Parlá: Homecoming, on view through July 6, 2025. “Marking the Way Home” premieres with a special screening and Q&A on Saturday, May 24, 2025, at 2pm at PAMM. Following the premiere, the documentary will be available on PAMM’s YouTube channel.
Directed by filmmaker Lazaro Llanes, “Marking the Way Home” offers viewers unprecedented insight into Parlá’s creative process and personal resilience. The documentary features exclusive interviews with prominent figures in the contemporary art world, including artists KAWS, Hank Willis Thomas, and Lee Quiñones; Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum; and Sarah Arison, president of the Arison Arts Foundation.
The film explores Parlá’s formative years in Miami as the child of Cuban immigrants, his artistic development across multiple cultural landscapes, and his profound physical and creative recovery following a four-month medically-induced coma due to COVID-19 complications in 2021, during which he suffered a stroke and significant brain bleeding.
Following the screening on Saturday, May 24, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session with José Parlá, PAMM Associate Curator Maritza M. Lacayo, and filmmaker Lazaro Llanes, offering deeper insights into both the exhibition and documentary. RSVP here.
“Marking the Way Home” is directed, produced, and edited by Lazaro Llanes with co-production by Raymond Adrian, Alexa Ferra, Maritza Lacayo, José Parlá, and Rey Parlá. The film features José Parlá, Maritza Lacayo, Sarah Arison, Judith Motta, Manon Slome, Rey Parlá, Hank Willis Thomas, Anne Pasternak, Craig Dykers, Lee Quiñones, Brian Donnelly (KAWS), and Jean-René (JR).
WHAT
“Marking the Way Home” Premiere and Q&A
WHEN
Saturday, May 24, 2025 2–3pm
WHERE
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)
1103 Biscayne Blvd.
Miami, FL 33132
RSVP here
ABOUT JOSÉ PARLÁ: HOMECOMING
Currently on view through July 6, 2025, José Parlá: Homecoming is an intricate exhibition in two parts that reimagines the traditional museum space. The exhibition features a series of never-before-seen works created after Parlá’s recovery, alongside a site-specific mural painted live at the museum over a weekend in late October 2024.
The museum gallery has been transformed into a recreation of Parlá’s Brooklyn studio—complete with paint-splattered tables, an eclectic vinyl record collection of Cuban-inspired music, and decades of the artist’s personal memorabilia. Through his unique mark-making process, characterized by movement and bodily gestures, Parlá produces works that challenge conventional visual culture through addition, erasure, and layering.
ABOUT JOSÉ PARLÁ
José Parlá (b.1973) creates paintings and multidisciplinary works based on his interest in hybrid forms of abstraction. He draws inspiration from various mediums including music, calligraphy, dance, and the decay of urban architecture and advertisements. His works poetically challenge ideas about language, politics, identity, and how we define places and spaces. Parlá’s relationship with mark-making is physical and textural, incorporating the body’s gestures into a painterly stream of consciousness.
Solo exhibitions of Parlá’s work have been organized at institutions such as The Bronx Museum, New York; Gana Art Center, Seoul; Istanbul’74, Istanbul; Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation; Neuberger Museum of Art, New York; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, among others.
ABOUT PAMM
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), led by Franklin Sirmans, Sandra and Tony Tamer director, promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture, and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. The 41-year-old South Florida institution, formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM), opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, on December 4, 2013, in Downtown Miami’s Maurice A. Ferré Park. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab, and classroom spaces.
