The core of the exhibition is made of artwork by four artists – Lucia Nimcova, Peter Puklus, Roman Korovin, Pavel Maria Smejkal, who have drawn their attention to complicated, paradoxical, tragic, as well as humorous cultural situations and their interpretation in Eastern Europe. The former collective history and its reflections in the everyday folklore, rituals, media and art construct ambiguous contexts for the historical, contemporary and conventional values, as well as political discourses. The abovementioned artists question and construct new critical views on the canonized values in the Western media, (re)interpret generally known facts of the collective history, ironize about the everyday and seemingly unimportant aspects, as well as construct new modern-day fairy tales about the ties with the past and processes in the present.

Curated by Alnis Stakle and Arnis Balčus.

Exhibition specs

• Archival prints on matte paper

The core of the exhibition is made of artwork by four artists – Lucia Nimcova, Peter Puklus, Roman Korovin, Pavel Maria Smejkal, who have drawn their attention to complicated, paradoxical, tragic, as well as humorous cultural situations and their interpretation in Eastern Europe. The former collective history and its reflections in the everyday folklore, rituals, media and art construct ambiguous contexts for the historical, contemporary and conventional values, as well as political discourses. The abovementioned artists question and construct new critical views on the canonized values in the Western media, (re)interpret generally known facts of the collective history, ironize about the everyday and seemingly unimportant aspects, as well as construct new modern-day fairy tales about the ties with the past and processes in the present.

Curated by Alnis Stakle and Arnis Balčus.

Exhibition specs

• Printed on Pro Pearl paper

The series “JHE” is partially unpublished and non-displayed part of JH Engström’s book “Trying to Dance” (Journal) that was released in 2004 and became one of the most sought after photobooks during the last 12 years and also marked JH Engström’s international breakthrough in the contemporary art scene. “Trying to Dance” consisted of nudes of young men and women, urban and rural landscapes, empty rooms and self-portraits. “He puts a feeling of loneliness high on the list of his sensibilities, he has come up with a strategy that heightens the mood; he distances the viewer from himself and from his world (i.e., you will feel my loneliness, too) by a purposefully imperfect technique,” writer on photography William A Ewing tells about JH Engström works.

JH Engström (1969) was born in Sweden and raised in Paris. He graduated from the … Read More »

In 2012, Iveta Vaivode(1979) went to her grandmother Antoņina’s village, Pilcene, in the Latgale region of Latvia. She was searching for the mythical place she imagined when looking through photographs of her grandmother’s youth. “For the most part, our lives aren’t connected anymore to one special place, a physical strip of land or old house our grandparents built. The ability to travel from one side of the world to the other, dynamically changing places of residence, and often travelling virtually as well as physically, has made our identities both more blurred and more unified. Getting to know the people of Pilcene, I had an odd feeling. Although they were strangers to me, I recognized something very familiar, but forgotten in them – the women of my family. Especially when Anna quietly asked me to listen to the singing of the … Read More »