Regina Silveira

Regina Silveira exhibition, Regina Silveira: Limits on view at Rubin & L Galleries, Stanlee & Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas El Paso, curated by Kate Bonansinga

For the first time in the history of the Rubin Center the work of a single artist, Regina Silveira, will occupy both the Rubin Gallery (where the cut-vinyl Gone Wild Reversed will be exhibited) and the L Gallery (where two-screen video projection Lunar will be exhibited). This is testament to the importance of this artist: she is one of the first Latin American women to earn and sustain international attention in the postmodern era. Gone Wild Reversed references both encroachment of human-instigated construction on desert life and the fear of being invaded by the “other.” The artist created it especially for this exhibition, but it is based on Gone Wild created and exhibited for the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Silveira states “by using the tracks of absent animals, the reaction I want to provoke is the degree of amazement of the unexpected, which can take you to an imaginary realm.” Critic Edward M. Epstein states, “For the artist, creeping infestation is a metaphor for political corruption of the kind that sometimes turned her home country, Brazil, into a festering mess.” (Artpapers, June 2010, p. 42) Lunar portrays natural cycles and ongoing processes. These two works synopsize Silveira’s artistic trajectory because her two foci have been and the political (Gone Wild Reversed) and the poetic (Lunar), and her two primary media are vinyl and video. Regina Silveira: Limits is supported in part by the College of Liberal Arts Alliance for Excellence.