Regina Silveira Pieces Together an Evolving Narrative of Latin America

Regina Silveira has spent the better part of three decades considering the relationship between media and meaning, particularly as it relates to Latin America. Based in São Paulo, Silveira is a pioneer of Brazilian conceptual art who is known for utilizing light, installation, and photos to consider how images circulate and tell stories. One of her projects working in this vein is Latin American Puzzle, a series that assembles sprawling visual narratives like jigsaws.

First presented in 1997, “To Be Continued…” features 100 black-and-white reproductions of photos, newspaper clippings, propaganda, advertisements, and more. Silveira nests each image into an oversized puzzle piece, which cuts off faces and scenes to leave fragments of pop culture icons, flora and fauna, and even the occasional mugshot spliced next to one another. Rather than organizing pieces by time period, geography, or thematic context, these juxtapositions create what the artist calls “a patchwork quilt of entropic character” that leaves a more complicated view of Latin America.

 ...