Ever since it was founded, the CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), helmed by the cultural promoter, artist, and businessman Jorge Glusberg, was intended as an interdisciplinary space where an experimental art movement could flourish. The establishment of collaborative networks connecting local and international artists and critics played an important role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists provided an introduction to the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
Together with the Spanish artist Julio Plaza (GT-525; doc. no. 1476852, GT-530; doc. no. pending), and Brazilians such as Regina Silveira (GT-526; doc. no. 1476849, GT-531; doc. no. 1476854) and Mário Ishikawa (GT-677; doc. no. 1477405), among others, Regina Vater (b. 1943) was one of the artists who became associated with the CAYC through the efforts of Walter Zanini (1925–2013), the critic, agent, and director of the MAC-USP (Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo) from 1963 to 1978. Glusberg and Zanini contributed to the establishment of a “transnational dialogic territory” by organizing a variety of initiatives including exchanges of regional and international artists, exhibitions, and symposiums. (Luiza Mader Paladino, Caiana, 2016.)
In the 1960s Vater’s work concentrated on women’s social roles based on an aesthetic that combined international Pop with Brazilian mass culture. In 1972 she won a prize at the Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna in Brazil, which provided her with the means to go to New York, where she took photographs of trash piled up in the streets. She used these images to create a number of works including artists’ books, poetry, installations, and postcards inspired by the work of the Brazilian concrete poet Augusto de Campos (b. 1931), Luxo/Lixo (Luxury/Trash, 1975). Those works were shown at her first exhibition at the CAYC in August 1975 (GT-539; doc. no. 1476855). Since then, her work was included in a number of group shows at the center, such as Graphiciens du rio de la plata (1975) (GT-543; doc. no. 1476851), Arte de Sistemas en Latinoamérica (1976) in Denmark, and (S_N [UNG LATINAMERIKANSK KUNST fra CAYC]). Her work was also included in some of the Encuentros Internacionales Abiertos de Video (GT-561; doc. no. 1477265, GT-605; doc. no. 1477316, GT-606; doc. no. 1477317), 20 artistas brasileños (1976) (GT-645; doc. no. 1477208), and The seventies (1976) (GT655; doc. no. 1477234).
During her time in the United States she lived in Austin, Texas, with her husband, the video-installations artist and teacher Bill Lundberg. Since the late 1970s her work has concentrated on environmental issues, with a complementary focus on feminism, culture, and identity, and on the recreation of American and African cosmogonies. In 2011 she returned to Rio de Janeiro, where she was born.
