1984 Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
1980 Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
1959 Instituto de Artes, Universidade Federa en Porto Alegre, Brazil
THE ART
Every outstanding artist is rooted in one or more traditions. Regina Silveira`s are pop art and conceptual art, the two main trends in art in the 20th and 21st centuries. Pop art was a rather material art, “hard” art, often presented in a traditional format: a painting, a sculpture. Conceptual art is rather an idea, not necessarily a hard object: it may be rebuilt a new and keep its art value intact. Regina`s art is both “hard” and conceptual. “Hard” because one can see the art piece there, on a wall, on the floor. Conceptual because the buyer not always necessarily acquires “a piece” from her, sometimes it may be just some instructions on how to produce the work, like a digital archive containing a matrix that can be developed, printed and installed even if the artist is not there (although most of the times she is). Everyday objects can still be found in Regina`s art just like in pop art (a hammer, a tyre, a sofa); but they are not direct representations of reality anymore: they are strong distortions of reality, ideas, allusions, symbols... Pop art still needed true colors (a blond hair, a green dollar bill, some red lips); Regina`s colors is black & white mainly: this is how reality is removed from her objects and only art remains and stands.
WHERE
Regina Silveira ́s art is for indoor as well as outdoors: museums, galleries, collector ́s rooms, corporate halls, public squares, buildings are all appropriate venues for her.
AT THE MoMA ALSO
Some of Regina Silveira`s works are in MoMA`s collection, among other museums, and in a number of prestigious private collections.
AROUND THE WORLD
Her agenda is a busy one, with exhibitions in the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, Middle East all throughout the year. Biennials and Triennials welcome her participation and she is represented in the best art fairs. She has exhibited her works at the Guggenheim-New York, Houston Fine Arts Museum, MASP São Paulo, Reina Sofia-Madrid...
THE BACKGROUND
Regina has been an university professor as well for most of her life, which means knowledge, research and experiment are real values for her. And as a professor she has taught two generations of younger artists. She can’t be copied, though: her work is too personal and original.
In Dark Swamp (2011) the far-reaching theme is the transposition of the biblical, mythical and historic plagues to nonlinear metaphors that could poetically allude to the plagues manifestations in contemporaneity. Conceptual updating is focused on the way other plagues could beset us today, in a range of social and environmental contexts, jeopardizing the future.
Dark Swamp metaphorically alludes to power, evil, or to the evilness of power, as well as destiny and prophecy. The elements acting as symbolic supports for Dark Swamp are the extended graphic appropriated image of alligators and a black egg, with oversized proportions. Laid at the center of the alligators pattern, the egg simulates an undesired gestation that expands circularly like an uncontrollable stain, with the potential to grow in any direction, in continuous replication.
Quimera is a visual paradox consisting of the image of a switched-on light bulb projecting not light, but a vast shadow in the form of a black stain or extended black drop, as if the shadow would be pouring out from the ligh bulb. In Quimera the light bulb is made as a shaped stained glass backlight, and the shadow is designed and executed as an adhesive vinyl cutout. Quimera was first shown in the artist’s solo exhibition Claraluz, at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Sao Paulo 2003. Its largest version was a hanging giant double backlight, placed at the Palácio de Cristal façade, for her solo exhibiton Lumen (2005), Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2005).
Regina Silveira 2013
WILD HOUSE Project MAIN PALAIS . Frankfurt . Wild House belongs to the series of recent interventions aiming to virtually transform architectures, made by Brazilian artist Regina Silveira. In Wild House the graphic motif is an accumulation of animals footprints which fictionally run and invade the inside spaces of the Main House in Frankfurt. As if entering through the windows located along the internal staircases, the pattern is a mixture of several tracks left by incompatible species. The animals footprints were originally conceived for Tropel (Sao Paulo Biennial, 1998) a facade ephemeral piece that evoked concepts of cultural devoration present in Antropophagy, an artistitic and literary manifestation, largely influential in Brazilian Modernism. Wild House intends to be a sort of phantasmagorical event where the animals would have left their marks over the walls, and then disappeared. Technically made as cut vinyl adhered upon the curved walls of the staircases, the footprints motif appears again in Tracks (2011), a video animation with soundtrack, projected at the building’s basement. Altogether, Tropel and Tracks want to bring the suggestion of a sudden and uncanny invasion of the Main Palais building. Other works from Regina Silveira will be on view, such as prints and wooden models, as well as video docmentaries on some of her interventions over several architectural spaces, internationally, in the last years.
La arquitectura es de un modo fundamental, aunque quizás no evidente, un espacio de escritura. Por eso siempre dice algo, aunque se presente impoluta y traslúcida, como en el vestíbulo de este renovado Museo Amparo. Por eso es posible reescribir sobre ella, intervenirla para hacerla contar una historia distinta a la que narra. Un bordado no parece ser la mejor manera de contar otra historia. Sin embargo, como los muros blancos del museo, dice mucho al parecer no querer decir nada. ¿De qué nos habla su silencio? Es notorio el silencio histórico de las mujeres y el anonimato de sus formas de escritura. El bordado es un recordatorio de ello: no tiene autora y sirve las más de las veces de mero ornamento. Las historias meritorias, se nos ha dicho, se esculpen en mármol y se yerguen en monumentos con nombres y fechas. Sin embargo, los temas y las imágenes que se trenzan en el bordado son públicas y populares –motivos vegetales y animales, escenas cotidianas. Nada muy heroico: ninguna batalla ni ningún militar victorioso de familia de abolengo. El bordado cuenta su historia sin nombres propios. Lo que es llamativo, pues la narración local de la empresa textil no es anónima. Tiene una larga tradición en Puebla y se entreteje con su pasado más noble y el de algunos de sus hombres más connotados, que dan nombre a sus calles. El esplendor de la industria textil se da en el siglo XIX, precisamente cuando se populariza la imagen de la china poblana, de blusa bordada y rebozo, que es anónima como los motivos de un bordado. Toda arquitectura habla, pues, y cuenta su historia. Hay que interrogarla, al igual que la ciudad que habita. Por eso, las puntadas de este bordado imaginario, de este sueño de píxeles agigantados, se dan no sólo sobre las paredes del museo sino sobre la historia y el imaginario local. Hay que entrar en él y salir de él. Hay que continuar tejiéndolo pues está lleno de huecos y vacíos y olvidos. Aún muestra los flecos que están por enhebrarse. Son la mirada del espectador, su cuerpo y su memoria, los que tienen que hilarlos. Como cualquier historia, este bordado muestra tanto como oculta. Aquí sueña Mirra, Catarina de San Juan, una mujer cosida a la tradición local, que se ha convertido en personaje mítico y, por eso, fantasmagórico: está presente en la medida en que está ausente. Como el trabajo femenino y doméstico, como el bordado, como la memoria de formas y ensoñaciones colectivas que se inscriben ahora en estos muros. Alberto López Cuenca