Through the camera’s time exposure process of recording that is unique to photography, I use eight-foot fluorescent tube lamps to manually draw and create light paintings, and various sized and shaped fluorescent lamps to write light graffiti text-based work. These light painting and light graffiti photographs are produced on location, either outside at night or in darkened interior spaces. My practice is a time-based art form anchored in the photographic process while incorporating performance, intervention, activism, and public art.

Working at night or in the dark has its own set of parameters and drawing with light is a mysterious and intriguing type of challenge. The fact that the work is non-invasive, leaves no physical trace of having existed, is not only enticing but also fundamental for me. This work allows me to tap into the creative awareness of artistic practice and social activism. Sharing the images and videos online is a form of solidarity and protest.

Vicki DaSilva was born in 1960 in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. She began making time exposure photographs in 1980 as an undergraduate art student at Kutztown University of PA. After receiving her BFA Vicki moved to NYC. She was influenced by both postmodern art and the convergence of street and graffiti art during the birth of hip-hop. She coined the term ‘light graffiti’ in the 80s to describe the act of creating drawings for the camera on location at night using a variety of colored light bulbs to mimic spray-painted graffiti.

Vicki did an internship and later worked as an assistant for internationally acclaimed performance artist Joan Jonas. Through Jonas, she was introduced to many artists including Richard Serra, for whom she worked as a personal assistant throughout the 80s. Vicki’s work evolved during this time, and in the late 80s, she began to use four-foot and eventually eight-foot fluorescent lamps to make landscape-based light paintings in both urban and rural locations. She continues to make both light graffiti text works and abstract works using fluorescent tube lamps.

In November 2018 Vicki and Antonio relocated permanently to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. They have been making art and memories together there since 1988.

Exhibitions include The Billboard Creative 2021 L.A. Billboard Exhibition, Lumen Lineation, SL Gallery NYC (2018), Allentown X 7: Photographic Explorations, Allentown Art Museum (2017), Radical Love #FEMALELUST, The Crypt Gallery, London, UK (2017), Interference, International Light Art Project, Tunis (2016), East River Flows, NYC Art in the Parks (2015). In 2012 Vicki won the international competition Art Takes Times Square and her work was displayed on the 13 digital billboards of Times Square Arts Midnight Moment. In March 2015 during UNESCO’s International Year of Light, Vicki partnered with Oxfam in London’s Trafalgar Square to raise awareness of the Syrian conflict. Her work has been featured in individual and group shows, private and public collections, and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and Paper Magazine among many others.