REGINA SILVEIRA: LATIN AMERICAN PUZZLE

What happens when an image fragments and time insists on rearranging it? In Latin American Puzzle, Regina Silveira (b. 1939, Porto Alegre, Brazil) revisits the same question three decades later. Presented at Alexander Gray Associates in New York, the exhibition brings together two puzzles, To be Continued… (1997) and Continued… (2025), which, rather than closing a cycle, expand it.

A pioneer of video and mixed-media art in Brazil, Silveira constructs each work from one hundred pieces that assemble disparate images: social events, iconic figures, and illustrations interwoven with explicit references to Latin American culture.

The thirty-year gap between the two pieces not only introduces formal and emotional contrasts, but also reveals how history, when repeated, mutates. Described by the artist as “an entropic patchwork quilt,” the series unfolds as a layered reflection on Latin American identity, always unstable, always unfinished. In this back-and-forth, the work underscores both continuity and change: stories that overlap, diverge, and transform.

Latin American Puzzle thus expands Silveira’s longstanding investigation into systems of visual representation, employing scale, absence, and distortion to challenge established hierarchies of power and persistent mythological narratives. Executed in black and white, the series draws on the visual language of media outlets that for decades portrayed Latin America as a tropical paradise, a dangerous frontier, or an object of exotic fascination.

By collapsing time and geography, Silveira creates unexpected encounters, sometimes humorous, sometimes unsettling, that expose the enduring presence of these images. The ellipses in the titles and the puzzle’s unfinished, reconfigurable structure ultimately gesture toward a narrative still in motion: one that resists closure and remains open to reinterpretation.

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 profound reevaluation of pre- and post-colonial narratives throughout the Western Hemisphere. Within this historical and political context, the series navigates between the commemorative and the festive, between the dead and the living, weaving a visual field where natural environments and constructed spaces intersect without fixed hierarchies.

Silveira’s constellation of images directly confronts the exploitation of natural resources and the devastation of indigenous communities, while simultaneously acknowledging the resilience and cultural inventiveness that continue to shape Latin America. In her visual lexicon, conquistadors stand alongside cocaine, piranhas beside Jesuit missionaries, pop singers next to pre-Columbian relics, and revolutionary figures juxtaposed with populist leaders. Through these deliberate juxtapositions, the artist maps the complexities, tensions, and paradoxes that animate collective histories—histories that remain unfinished and in perpetual flux.

Furthermore, the difference between the two puzzles signals a more abrupt shift. The most recent work evokes the ecosystem of global information technologies that now shape our contemporary experience, highlighting the profound consequences of their unchecked circulation.

This environment includes the instrumentalization of images by the political propaganda of radical and divisive leaders, instant access to records of both historical and ongoing atrocities, and the complex coexistence—at times harmonious, at times fraught—of pop icons and artistic references.

Within this complex visual framework, a Latin American identity emerges, shaped both from within and in dialogue, or even friction, with the foreign gaze. At the same time, the work raises the inevitable question of whether this cumulative and fragmentary gesture conceals an iconoclastic intent on the part of the artist.

Each piece of the puzzle activates its own story: some present themselves as immediately recognizable signs, while others resist interpretation and demand closer scrutiny. Together, they form a dense and vibrant mosaic of inherited myths, contested narratives, and lived realities that continue to shape contemporary Latin America. Rather than offering a totalizing image, the assemblage insists on the friction between meanings and the coexistence of contradiction and instability.

In this intermediate space, between connection and dissonance, memory and the present, Silveira positions the viewer, inviting them not only to look but to question the images they consume and the narratives these images uphold. Always open to reconfiguration, the puzzle asserts itself as a critical metaphor for a history that cannot be fixed and remains deliberately open.

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 Award (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.

---