José Parlá is a Brooklyn-based contemporary artist whose work has been described as "lying between the boundary of abstraction and calligraphy." Parlá is publicly known for his permanent installations of large-scale paintings. In 2013 he painted the mural Nature of Language at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University, the mural Diary of Brooklyn at the Barclays Center, and a 90-foot mural ONE: Union of the Senses in the lobby of The One World Trade Center. Parlá constructs his paintings improvisationally by layering materials, saying "I’m really interested in the way our lives are built up out of memory and history, and how we reflect that in our surroundings." Parlá has exhibited worldwide and collaborated with artists from various countries. In 2012, Jose worked with French artist JR on a piece titled "Wrinkles of the City: Havana", Cuba a project, which in the same year was selected to be in the 11th Havana Biennial. As part of the collaboration, Parlá and JR co-directed a documentary by the same title that was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentary Short and Best U.S. Premiere Documentary Short in 2013.