“True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters. It is science but not its wrong application to life.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

A colourful jigsaw of cultures, Brazil is a country, which to us is enigmatic and alluring. The lion of the Latin America is virtually a mosaic of cultures. From the exciting soil of carnivals, the sun drenched beaches, the enormity of the dark Amazon to the stimulating rhythms and beats of samba, comes an exciting physical culture. A geography dotted with a multitude of ethnic groups that reeks of a breath which is pulsating, with a rare vigour.

A gigantic melting pot of different skin colours, flavours, sounds and ideas engaged from different parts of the globe, comes the more happy and a relaxed atmosphere. A natural wonder of mythic magnitudes, where a great many ethnic groups have assimilated with the indigenous.

To understand the works of Regina Silveira and Artur Luiz Piza, one has to be familiar with the main currents of western art, especially after Surrealism and Dadaism. Since the beginning, the movement (of Brazilian modernism) has been included in all spheres of arts, not just visual arts. It has changed literature, it has changed poetry, it has changed music, it has changed everything in the field of arts and of course, also in behaviour and attitude.

What really brought a lot of streams and trajectories into the mainstream was the advent of modernism, which affirmed the power to create and reshape the environment. Reforming the cultural movements in art, architecture, music and literature, modernism encouraged every aspect of existence, which changed all aspects of Brazilian art. A common visual language also having resonance of the sister cultures came into being. Conceptual art took a leap above the realism of pure painting and sculpture.

To introduce one of the contemporary trends in Brazilian contemporary art, it is relevant to place Regina Silveira as one of the representatives of Brazil’s prominent voices. A graduate in Visual Arts from Universidade do Rio Grande Do Sul, from the 1960’s Regina began to paint, draw and make prints, showing empathy with figurative expressionism with strong roots in the modernism of the country.

As an independent curator it became a challenge to write about the work of an artist who is truly a ‘global nomad’. Regina is literally inhabited by geographies across the globe, physically or through her work. One of the reasons being that her singular language crosses boundaries of ethnicity, identity, colour and languages. Here, language is that of an artist, as a craftsman, taking off from the mother of all art drawing. Regina in the ‘avataar’ of multimedia artists, explores a set of mediums from graphics to painting. And this is what makes her completely timeless and yet so contemporary. Like her colleague Artur Luiz Piza, who makes up the show ‘Brazilian Watercolours’, the two are bound together by yet another basic acme geometry. Regina in both the works ‘Lunar’ and ‘Double’ uses the geometry of architecture, astronomy and new media to create work which has to be experienced, to be understood. In the works, real spaces are included, spaces where she builds installations, as well as virtual spaces which are represented by conventional architectural drawings, which she says serves her as “motives for distortions and estrangements.” Her works literally works as a bridge between the different languages of art she employs. No newcomer to India, Regina Silveira’s works were last seen here at the 7th Triennial of India in New Delhi in 1991.