TIME TO KILL is an evocative interrogation of gendered aging, unpacking the
ideals of beauty, caretaking, and maternal and domestic duty imposed on women
over the course of their lives. It unfolds through a compelling combination of
image and text, with photographs encompassing portraits of women, landscapes,
and spaces both vast and claustrophobic, as well as still lifes in which plants,
domestic objects, and weapons are absurdly combined, alluding to impermanence
and cultural double standards. This distinctive visuality is interwoven with
letters written by Parlato to an ambiguous, ageless, and perhaps illusory
recipient. Through these entwined mediums, the artist looks both out and in,
reckoning with a wild variety of physical and emotional experiences including
the disjuncture between the way we see ourselves and the ways others see us as
we age. Bodily transformation and the passing of time are pictured as both
brutal and freeing as Parlato carves out a psychological space to contend with
her fears and fantasies around aging in ways verging on the eerie and surreal.
Building on the rich visual language of Parlato’s celebrated book Who is Changed
and Who is Dead (2021), TIME TO KILL examines selfhood, motherhood, sacrifice,
and visibility in an unflinching confrontation with what it means to be mortal.
