Lilith's Dream · Regina Silveira

In Dark Swamp (2011) the far-reaching theme is the transposition of the biblical, mythical and historic plagues to nonlinear metaphors that could poetically allude to the plagues manifestations in contemporaneity. Conceptual updating is focused on the way other plagues could beset us today, in a range of social and environmental contexts, jeopardizing the future.

Dark Swamp metaphorically alludes to power, evil, or to the evilness of power, as well as destiny and prophecy. The elements acting as symbolic supports for Dark Swamp are the extended graphic appropriated image of alligators and a black egg, with oversized proportions. Laid at the center of the alligators pattern, the egg simulates an undesired gestation that expands circularly like an uncontrollable stain, with the potential to grow in any direction, in continuous replication.

Quimera is a visual paradox consisting of the image of a switched-on light bulb projecting not light, but a vast shadow in the form of a black stain or extended black drop, as if the shadow would be pouring out from the ligh bulb. In Quimera the light bulb is made as a shaped stained glass backlight, and the shadow is designed and executed as an adhesive vinyl cutout. Quimera was first shown in the artist’s solo exhibition Claraluz, at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Sao Paulo 2003. Its largest version was a hanging giant double backlight, placed at the Palácio de Cristal façade, for her solo exhibiton Lumen (2005), Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2005).

Regina Silveira 2013