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Regina Silveira

(1939– ) Born in Porto Alegre. Lives and works in Sao Paulo.

Over more than six decades, Silveira, a critical figure in Brazilian conceptual art, has investigated the tension between real space, spatial perspective, and illusions, weaving political meaning into graphic media and site-specific installations that respond to specific sites. Recognized for her exploration of space through geometric constructions, Silveira's work, recently expanded by the use of digital media, is celebrated both for its conceptual rigor and formal impact.

Trained as a painter at the Instituto de Artes da Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul in 1959, in the 1960s, she began her artistic education under the guidance of the expressionist painter Iberê Camargo, and soon included woodcut and lithography among her artistic practices. Working with expanded graphic media since her first stay in Spain (1967), she moved to Porto Rico in 1969 to teach and work at UPR Mayaguez Campos. Back in Brazil in 1973, Silveira was hired to teach at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado and the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo in 1974. With a Ph.D. from ECA/USP in 1984, the artist has an extensive teaching career. Since the 1960s, she has exhibited individually and participated in various biennials and collective shows, both national and international. Having received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (1991), Pollock Krasner (1993), and Fulbright Foundation (1994), her work is represented in various museums and collections, in Brazil and abroad.

A Genealogy for Tropicals and Fauna Mix

Tropicals, the set of eight carpets specially designed for the lobby of the Cidade Matarazzo hotel, aims to parodically refer to the imagery of Brazilian fauna. For a long time, the species of this fauna, gathered in various manuals, reproductions of historical naturalist treaties, and many other types of records, have haunted the artist's imagination and motivated her to touch the diverse spheres of meaning that this fauna allows—whether simply accumulated or configured as a ghostly invasion of constructed spaces.

In search of a genealogy for Tropicals, she thought that a starting point could be Gone Wild (1996), the trails of painted coyotes in the entrance hall of the MCA San Diego, a first and deliberate animalization of architecture, which was then continued in the more mixed and wild trails of Tropel (1998). In Tropel, imaginary marks of prey and predators covered the lateral façade of the Bienal de São Paulo building, alluding to the implied devouring theme of Antropofagia proposed for its 28th edition.

While these works belonged to the realm of traces and indexical marks, those that are more directly related to Tropicals are the ones that appropriate drawings of different species, placed in accumulation. This series begins with Mundus Admirabilis, where oversized harmful insects occupy architectural spaces. The first Mundus Admirabilis was installed in the large glass cube built in the garden of CCBB Brasília for the exhibition Jardins do Poder (2007). There, in the capital of Brazil, the harmful insects, trapped and isolated in a dazzling cage, sought to allude to the nefarious character of Brazilian political life. When transported to other environments, both in Brazil and abroad, this accumulation of harmful insects and creatures took on different meanings, connected to infestation and the deterioration of everyday life – especially when combined with the porcelain pieces from Rerum Naturae (2008) and aligned with other works from that period, commenting on and updating biblical and historical plagues in contemporary times.

Even more ironic and certainly closer to the intentions involved in the Tropicals series is the fauna that makes up the animated scenarios created with the collaboration of her entire studio team in 2017 for the musical spectacle Fruta Gogoia, a tribute to Gal Costa's 70th birthday, promoted by SESC. The first scene features Gal's hair as a sequence of accumulation, gathering drawings of butterflies, owls, monkeys, toucans, jaguars, insects, and much more. Alongside the show, the sixteen animated scenes that follow are composed of shells, snakes, insects, bird wings, jaguar skin, alligator skin, and others. In the end, there was a fauna that the artist wanted to be experienced as glorious and very close to the possible interpretations of exoticism that have always been attached to Brazilian fauna.

During this period, she already dreamed of creating wall tapestries that could be seen as a parody of historical and museum European tapestries, the ones that depict scenes and existing or invented animals from this exotic side of the Atlantic Ocean. This series is now in progress, under the general title Fauna Mix.

Tropicals, in its own way, fits into this desire that was very present in her imagination. The eight floor carpets designed for the hotel lobby are composed of a mixture that brings together insects, centipedes, spiders, crickets, butterflies, ants, and other creatures, laid out on a bed of leaves, in the form of a summarized flora. The set has different shapes and colors, but the drawn inscription is always the same, arranged modularly, sometimes including small differences in scale.

What did she want to perceive when these carpets were installed? Simply how people would walk on this background of mixed creatures – sometimes the pattern wants to be just beautiful, but it can also be disturbing – as the figures were deliberately made larger than the feet that will walk over them – these creatures cannot be crushed! Perhaps imaginatively, they could hide under the leaves or escape from the bottom of the carpets?

Find out more at: reginasilveira.com

Represented by the gallery: lucianabritogaleria.com.br