Before noting the impact of Silveira’s riveting first video works, consider them in light of the momentum of her early practice.  During the first phase, she established her prowess in painting and graphics. She achieved two fine arts degrees. She participated in numerous Brazilian and international exhibitions, held lectureship positions at various universities and won a scholarship for extensive study in Madrid.  Her celebrated approach was often characterized by the depiction of everyday objects in enigmatic ways.  For example, in a photograph, two typical identical extension cords, elegantly positioned on a blank background, seem to possess the quiet frisson of a relationship… Silveira’s oeuvre often entices with poetic surreality.
Her cultivation of options for artmaking accelerated in 1970s and 1980s. Wall and room-scaled works included animal tracks, hand and footprints and repetitive marks across gallery spaces achieved with vinyl adhesives and projections. These agglomerations “re-spatialized” rooms by defying the equilibrium of conventional dimensions.  Photography, microfilm, electronic panels, video, video text and the computer  were among her new tools.  By 1974, Silveira also became a pro-active conspirator in developments at three influential São Paulo art/tech hubs. Walter Zanini’s Museu de Arte Contemporanea (MAC), Centro de Estudos e Artes Visuais (Aster) and the Cockpit Studio served as labs for emerging avant garde video. A group of her landmark videos, created during 1977, coalesced into a conceptual language that reimagined the influence of Marcel Duchamp and propelled breakthroughs that defined her legendary 21st century installations.
Duchamp sought to tantalize beyond the optical. He deployed absurdity, paradox, cryptic and ironic texts, outlines, shadows and found objects, appropriations and odd situations to engage speculation beyond what is visible. Arlindo Machado observed, “ A good part of Silveira’s work, is constituted by absent objects, with only their mark or shadow remaining.”  In the black and white video, Campo, 1977, one watches as Silveira’s finger traces various complex geometric forms.  But one sees, envisions these forms, despite that at the end of the performance, there is nothing there.  Memory, instinctual and intellectual projection, presence and absence are all at play.   For Artificío, 1977, only the single word of the title appears – or does it?  Spelled out with transparent strips, it disappears as the artist’s hand patiently slips in and out of frame and gradually lifts away the letters into nothingness. Is what remains utter fullness? sublime emptiness? both? Art is generated from the ineffable. 

Several early Brazilian video artists used the new medium to evoke sensations related to producing art under the repressive regime. In Objetoculto, 1977, most of the screen is masked. A tiny aperture suggests there is a face beyond it but seer and seen are both obscured, effaced.  In 1981, two videos offer more explicit proposals of discontent. Arte de Desenhar, is a parade of threatening and obscene hand gestures, presented simultaneously in silhouette, with an actual hand and by shadow.  Morfas uses extreme close-ups to distort common household objects into implications of Kafkaesque paranoia and estrangement. 

By the 1990s, Silveira had completed a Phd (University of São Paulo). She had culled considerable recognition and numerous grants from institutions including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Krasner-Pollack Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.   Her works were in major Brazilian and international collections including the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Art Museum of Miami and Houston Museum of Fine Arts.  During this decade Silveira’s stark, haunting reveries were often embodied in installation works like O Paradoxo do Santo, 1994.  A small statue of a figure on horseback sat atop a narrow plinth at the center of a large gallery.  Behind it a vast shadow loomed, providing Wizard of Oz-like insight into how the mighty imagine themselves to be seen – figuratively and literally projected. In reality the effect was not an actual projection. It was produced with the precise application of an expanse of black vinyl adhesive. This shadow and the scenario stunned viewers and intensified their perception of space, both actual and conceptual.

The 21^st century Silveira focused on works incorporating large scale, indelible imagery and dramatic settings, via new digital tools to plot and project immersive installations.  In several locations Silveira customized    

Descendo a Escado (2004), an intervention consisting of line drawings of staircases superimposed via video projection, within actual darkened staircases.  Notoriety ensued as participants spread the word about how these experiences engulfed and disoriented them within Escheresque perspectives. To heighten the experience, Silveira added an unseen dimension –  an audio track of footsteps of those not present…or were they? Such works garnered commissions for massive, outdoor, temporary, site-specific installations.  In some instances, her ambitions were undermined by the limitations of budgets, timeframes and safety or zoning regulations, but a gallery catalog, Regina Silveira Unrealized/ Não Feito, 2019 explored how even her unrealized projects continue to resonate in a realm between being to nothingness. 

The artist’s works, whether installed or only crafted as maquettes and proposals, perpetuate the ethos of the early videos. Focused on ephemeral actions, a glimpse launches profound, memorable implications.  Silveira’s endeavors anticipated the global embrace of art beyond conventional art-media, art beyond the constraints of art gallery spaces and art beyond the circle of traditional art audiences. Arlindo Machado summarized, “we have the performance of an artist who practices a strange form of science, closer to alchemy than chemistry, with more affinity to myths than to history, more ideographic than ideological, halfway between astronomy and astrology. Fiction Science. “  

Indeed Silveira’s work is more than a matter of “what you see is what you get.’”   The aftereffect is also potent.  Her epic-scale works are precise constructions. These entail  complex calculations, advanced technologies and teams of assistants to seamlessly elicit shimmering moments that have the conjuring power of a mass séance.  The artist’s superpower is how she prompts what lingers in the mind of the beholder…

Regina Silveira
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