The series Roots marked a significant moment in José Parlá’s career, reflecting his deep engagement with history, migration, and cultural identity. Using painting, texture, and spatial engagement, the works explore the roots of identity, both personal and collective, by drawing from the artist’s Cuban heritage and his experience of displacement.

Roots investigates the layering of memory and history within urban environments. Much like city walls accumulate marks over time, Parlá’s surfaces are built up with dense textures, eroded layers, and expressive gestural strokes, echoing the way places absorb and conceal history. His calligraphy, which has long been a defining feature of his work, shifts between his signature script-like abstraction and a more raw, fragmented style, representing the way identity and memory evolve over time. His compositions reflect the physical act of painting, a process deeply tied to movement and presence.

The series reflects themes of cultural resilience and belonging, addressing the impact of displacement while honouring the histories that remain embedded in people and places. Like his past works, Roots blurs the boundary between contemporary and historical, capturing the marks left behind by movement, memory, and identity.