Regina Vater's Retrospective at Jaqueline Martins Gallery Explores African and Indigenous Matrices

Regina Vater's exhibition 'A Celebration for the GOoD Time' runs at Galeria Jaqueline Martins until October 30, symbolizing her desire for change in Brazilian politics and COVID-19 response. The show references a 1983 performance in New York's Central Park, organized during Ronald Reagan's presidency and a period of market-driven 'bad painting.' Vater invited artists including Antoni Miralda, Alison Knowles, and Bill Lundberg to perform in white, contributing white art and food for a ritual of purification. A video from the event plays throughout the gallery. The retrospective spans 40 years of her collaborative work across various cities, featuring installations, videos, photographs, drawings, and objects from 1980 to 2020. Key installations include 'Rama Dourada,' linked to the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Amazon's regenerative rhythms, and 'Deus dá nozes a quem não tem dentes,' with dozens of gilded walnuts. Another work, 'Golias,' materializes a 1985 drawing of an Amazonian myth turtle, challenging Picasso as a colonizing figure appropriating African imagery. Vater critiques Western culture's opportunistic history, from invasion to profit. Her interest in archaic cultures and concepts of time, influenced by Candomblé and Caetano Veloso's song 'Tempo,' underpins her practice as an artist-ecologist and activist-anthropologist.