“More than anything, I wanted perspective to act like a sort of philosophical look at the world of appearances, delving into our recognition of things in our surroundings.”
As one of the pioneers of video art in Brazil, Regina Silveira has investigated the representation of reality and the significance of imagery for more than three decades.
Born in 1939 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Silveira received her MFA and PhD from the School of Communication and Arts at the University of São Paulo in 1980 and 1984, respectively, after graduating from the prestigious Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in 1959.
She relocated to teach at the University of Puerto Rico from 1969 to 1973, with fellow conceptual artist, Julio Plaza. When Silveira returned to Brazil in 1973 as an educator at the FAAP in São Paulo, she found new emphasis on conceptual art in the curriculum. With the advances in technology and widespread interest in non-traditional media, Silveira’s work began to take on more conceptual risk and even playfulness.
In her early works, Silveira experimented mostly with painting site-specific pieces directly onto walls, and as her career has progressed, she has incorporated digitally- produced static images. After extensive instruction and exploration in painting, Silveira deployed printmaking as a mode for exploring the effects of distortion distortion. For Silveira, the precision of printmaking opened a new field of graphic experimentation.
Silveira‘s work explores the paradoxical relationship between presence and absence, a notion that she has examined by incorporating shadows, tire tracks, and foot imprints into her visual vocabulary.
In an interview with Dan Cameron, the artist said of contemporary art and her work ,“[… ]perhaps the most important thing has been the emphasis on impermanence[…]—even close to the actions of graffiti—with the intention that they exist only as temporary occupations, to transform and resignifiy specific places.”
Silveira’s many installations and duplications have been shown internationally, and she is widely recognized for her innovative use of gallery space and examination of light and shadows in relation to absurd or absent objects.
While the medium for her philosophical inquiry has changed over the years, her relentless pursuit of these topics has not, resulting in a sustained scholarship into the nature of visual representation.
Silveira lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
2015:Regina Silveira: CRASH, Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil
2014: El sueño de Mirra y otras constelaciones, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
2013: Regina Silveira, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY, USA
Octopus, Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, USA
2010: Tramazul, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil
2009: Tropel (Reversed), Kunstmuseet Koge Skitsesamling, Denmark
2007: Sombra Luminosa, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
2005: Lumen, Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
2000: Perpetual Transformation, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., USA
1998: Super-Herói: Night and Day, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina
1984: Sombras, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Regina Silveira has participated in numerous group exhibitions including American Photography: Recent Acquistions from the Museum of Modern Art, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2014); the XI Biennial of Cuenca, Museu Municipal de Arte Moderno, Cuenca, Ecuador (2011); Philagrafika 2010, Moore College of Arte & Design, Philadelphia, PA (2010); the XV Bienial de Cerveira, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal (2009); Brazil: Body and Soul, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA (2001); and I Havana Biennial, Cuba (1984).
Celeção Itaú, São Paulo, Brazil
Celeção SECS, São Paulo, Brazil
Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, New York, New York
The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas
Museo de Arte Contemporânea de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil
Museo del Barrio, New York, New York San Diego Museum of
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan
The Queens Museum of Art, New York, New York
