Regina Silveira: Latin American Puzzle

Alexander Gray Associates, New York, presents Regina Silveira: Latin American Puzzle, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the Gallery. The exhibition brings together To Be Continued… (1997) from Silveira’s Latin American Puzzle series and its newest installment, Continued… (2025). Equally monumental, both works are composed of 110 oversized, interlocking jigsaw pieces. 100 of the pieces in each work bear a singular bold image drawn from the region’s diverse cultures, histories, and landscapes. Building on her longstanding exploration of the circulation of images, Silveira brings together iconic figures and pivotal events with symbols of popular culture, sport, and the arts, as well as maps, flora, and fauna. Described by the artist as “a patchwork quilt of entropic character,” the series unfolds as a layered, open-ended meditation on Latin American identity.

Conceived in 1992—five centuries after the first European incursions into the Americas—Latin American Puzzle emerged amid a wave of democratic transitions across the region and a reframing of pre- and post-colonial histories throughout the Western hemisphere. Within these contexts, the series embraces the memorial and the celebratory, the dead and the living, the natural and built environments. Silveira's constellation of images confronts the exploitation of natural resources and devastation of Indigenous communities, while acknowledging the resilience and creativity that continue to define the region. Within the artist’s visual lexicon, conquistadors appear alongside cocaine, piranhas beside Jesuit missionaries, pop singers with pre-Columbian relics, and revolutionaries with populist leaders. Across these juxtapositions, Silveira maps the complexities and paradoxes that animate Latin America’s collective and evolving stories.

Spanning nearly three decades, the interval between To Be Continued… and Continued… underscores both continuity and change—histories that overlap, diverge, and transform. The work extends Silveira’s longstanding investigation into systems of visual representation, employing scale, absence, and distortion to challenge established power hierarchies and mythological histories. Rendered in black and white, the series draws on the visual language of mass media that once portrayed Latin America as a tropical paradise, a dangerous frontier, and an object of exotic fascination. By collapsing time and geography, Silveira creates unexpected encounters—sometimes humorous, sometimes unsettling—that expose how such representations persist. The ellipses in her titles, and the puzzle’s unfinished, reconfigurable structure, point to a story still unfolding: one that resists closure and remains open to reinterpretation.

Each puzzle piece tells its own story—some instantly familiar, others elusive. Together, they form a vivid composite of the myths, histories, and lived realities that shape Latin America today. Through this intricate assembly, Silveira invites viewers to look closely, question what they see, and find meaning in the space between connection and contradiction.

Silveira has exhibited throughout Europe and the Americas, including solo exhibitions at Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, Spain (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo (MAC-USP), Brazil (2021); Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil (2020); Pavilion Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Art Museum, WA (2019); Museu Brasileiro de Escultura (MuBE), São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil (2015); Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2014); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2012); Iberê Camargo Foundation, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2009); Køs Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Køge, Denmark (2009); Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia (2008); and Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2005), among others. Her work is represented in public collections internationally, including the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Tomás Francisco Prieto Prize (2025); Prêmio Governador do Estado de São Paulo (2013); the MASP–Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand Award for Career (2013), which was accompanied by an exhibition; and the Award for Life and Work (2012) from the Brazilian Art Critics Association.