Regina Vater

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1943 — present

Regina Vater (born Regina Maria da Motta Váter) belongs to a generation of contemporary Brazilian artists (including Helio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and Lygia Pape), who pioneered various forms of conceptualism, such as mail art, video art, performative photography, and art installations. In her work, Vater critically addressed Brazil’s repressive military dictatorship, and has also explored everyday reality, the natural environment, and Brazilian traditions of African and Indigenous origin. Vater studied art with artists Frank Schaeffer and Iberê Camargo, and architecture at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro during the 1960s. At the beginning of the next decade, she moved to New York, and studied printmaking at Pratt Institute. At the time, she conducted numerous interviews with John Cage, including a video interview that eventually became a part of her 1987 film "Controverse." After living some years in Paris, in the late 1970s Vater moved to São Paulo, where she became interested in video art. In 1980, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and returned to New York. From 1985 to 2012 she lived in Austin, Texas, with her husband, the video artist Bill Lundberg. In 2002, Vater curated at Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin the show "Brazilian Visual Poetry," the first exhibition exploring this subject in the United States. Vater’s work has been featured in important exhibitions: the São Paulo Biennials of 1969 and 1976; the Venice Biennale of 1976; and "Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists," curated by Guy Brett in England in 1990. Both Vater and Lundberg now live in Brazil.