Violeta Parra, Chilean artist

I’m going to speak about a person that isn’t important in my field. I’m going to speak about of a “craftswoman”: Violeta Parra.
She was born in 1917 in San Carlos, in the Eighth region. When she was a child, she lived in Chillán. I know the house where she lived their first infancy in San Carlos, unfortunately the house have serious damages by the earthquake.
It’s very interesting that all the people important in the area of the arts and literature are of the Eighth region: Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, Víctor Jara, and the Parra’s family: Nicanor Parra, and “Uncle Roberto” and “Uncle Lalo”.
She is known for their music, but was poet ant plastic artist too. In fact, she was the first Chilean in to exhibit in the Louvre in Paris.
I think that their work is very interesting. The people say that she was a craftswoman, but I think that she is an artist. Their work wasn’t a simple copy of a piece of craftwork; It’s an operation of recodifying and introduce new elements. For example when she compiled the “folk” music, and then she made their song, with base in the popular singings, changed the structure of the melodic line. There is an intellectual operation.
In the sack-cloths, she used a technique that wasn’t a speciality of this artist; all the people can do that. This is folklore, and the folklore is the form of the culture that can unit more firmly to the people. The folklore is something that can represent and homogenize to the people and they feel part of one virtual community, the folk community.
She is a person special because she comes of a field alien to the art field. And she was admitted in the art field of Paris! I think that she is a person that should be recognized how artist, because that is.
She committed suicide in 1967. I think that isn’t terrible. This a poet act, you are who decide the hour of your dead, not death.