The Intimate Resistance: Performances 1971 – 2023 is the first large-scale museum retrospective in South America dedicated to the revolutionary work of Australian artist Mike Parr (b. 1945). Recognized as a pioneer in the history of performance art , Parr has challenged the boundaries of the medium for over fifty years, focusing on space, time, resistance, and the mechanics of representation.

His work is visceral and disturbing, often involving pain, bodily fluids, and acts of endurance, using his own body as subject, object, and medium to explore his physical and mental limits. The exhibition title, borrowed from philosopher Josep Maria Esquirol, serves as a hypertext to contextualize his subversive oeuvre. The show includes over 80 works produced across five decades, ranging from his early "task performances", to controversial pieces like Cathartic Action: Social Gestus No.5 (The “Armchop”) (1977), and recent political works such as Close the Concentration Camps (2002).

The exhibition features Montage in Space & Time (1971-2023), a six-channel synchronized video installation that cinematically re-stages his most demanding pieces, and Photo-Death (2023), a slide projection with shocking photo documentation. Both explore new ways to safeguard the memory of performance. Finally, the new site-responsive performance Painting the Australian flag blind (2023) questions Anglo-Saxon hegemony. The exhibition offers a unitary view of the coherence of one of today's most extreme, radical, and iconoclastic living artists.