Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2023 highlights
From April 27 up until July 23, Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2023 spans the exhibition halls, galleries and cityscape.
Held since 2016, Riga Photography Biennial offers the NEXT program every second year. It is dedicated to focusing on young and promising artists and curators from the Baltics, Nordic countries and Europe who are still in the early stages of their careers. This year, the program tackles the “awkward” topics - topics that are often avoided or silenced because they can provoke strong emotions and disagreements.
A great part of the program exhibitions are already open, and some along with special events are yet to come. The whole program can be viewed on biennial’s website and the annual RPB’s publication that is available at the event venues.
Here are five highlights on what no to miss in this year’s program.
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2023, view from Michalina Kacperak’s Solo Exhibition “Soft Spot”, Riga Art Space. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Michalina Kacperak’s Solo Exhibition “Soft Spot”
at the exhibition hall Riga Art Space
In Soft Spot, Michalina Kacperak (1993) explores her personal experience as the oldest of four daughters of an alcoholic. She is drawing inspiration from her youngest sister, now 13-year old Zosia, who has created a safe world for herself in a menacing home. For years, she has covered the walls of her room with drawings, created colorful structures and filled it with dolls, figurines, toys and games, turning the room into a colorful shelter.
Through this room, Kacperak found a resemblance with her own experiences. Initially, she started documenting the space taking photographs for herself, with the intention of comforting her inner child. Later on, she began to create installations based on the original compositions. Soon Kacperak began to provoke various actions with her sister, resulting in a breakthrough - jointly produced portraits of their father. The exhibition showcases the captured photographs, Kacperak's installations, as well as works created collaboratively with her sister.
The exhibition is curated by the latvian artist and curator, the head of Riga Photography Biennial Inga Brūvere, in collaboration with the exhibition hall Riga Art Space, the Jednostka gallery and National Film School in Lodz in Poland.
Soft Spot is available from April 28 to June 18. Entrance – according to the pricelist of the venue.
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2023, view from RPB – NEXT 2023 Award “Emerging Curator!” Exhibition “Time Found”, Pilot. Photo: Andrejs Strokins
RPB – NEXT 2023 Awards’ exhibitions
at the ISSP Gallery and Pilot
In part of the NEXT program, Riga Photography Biennial runs two contests: “Seeking the Latest in Photography!” aims to discover and appraise the creative efforts of young artists who demonstrate the power of the image in their works, offering an original point of view and conceptual depth reflecting our current times. The Award “Emerging Curator!” offers Latvia's emerging curators the opportunity to show their abilities and take part in promoting awareness of curators' significant contribution to the art ecosystem.
Both competitions took place by the end of 2022, and the laureates were determined by international juries.
The winner of RPB – NEXT 2023 Award “Seeking the Latest in Photography!” has become Ieva Baltaduonyte with her solo show “Uprooted”. It can be viewed at the ISSP Gallery from May 12 until June 29.
The Award “Emerging Curator!” has been given to Laima Daberte with the exhibition “Time Found”. Along her own works, the works of Armands Andže (LV), Kristaps Freimanis (LV) and Teresa Faleiro (PT) are on show at the Experimental Art Space “Pilot” of the Art Academy of Latvia from May 8 until July 15.
Entrance for the both exhibitions is free of charge.
Diāna Tamane, from series “Half-Love”, 2008-
Diāna Tamane’s Solo Exhibition Half-Love
at Latvian Museum of Photography
Diāna Tamane’s work Half-Love follows her half-sister Elīna, her father's daughter from his second marriage, growing up. The pictures were taken while spending time together at their family home in Kursīši, where Diana visits every summer. The passage of time in the series is revealed both visually and metaphorically, as motifs repeat. The process of taking photos is an opportunity for Tamane to spend time with her younger half-sister, as well as a chance to re-enact her own childhood experiences against the background of a seemingly idyllic seaside village. Thus, Half-Love is both an observation of her sister’s life and their relationship as well as a love letter to her, and Elīna's continuous eagerness to cooperate and participate in the project reveals the close bond between the two half-sisters, which they managed to create despite the fact that they grew up in different families.
Similarly to Tamane's previous work, Half-Love focuses on her family (especially the women of the family in several generations) and herself as an integral part of the unit, despite the fact that for many years since graduating high school, Tamane has chosen to live abroad – no closer than the neighbouring country of Estonia. Probably due to the fact that by getting closer and going further away again, she can observe her family and dissect it with an almost typological approach. However, unlike Tamane's previous works, in Half-Love she has abandoned the strict conceptual frameworks, combining sensitive portraits of her sister with improvised documentary images.
The exhibition is curated by the latvian curator, also the editor of the annual RPB’s publication Evita Goze.
Half-Love is avalaible from May 19 to July 23. Entrance – according to the pricelist of the venue.
Visvaldas Morkevicius, Public Secrets, #31, 2014
The international conference “Awkward Topics: Troubleshooting”
at the ISSP Gallery
The conference will include a variety of young but already well-established photographers from the Central Europe and Baltic countries. A generation of photographers born in late 1980s and 1990s is not so much concerned with a state of humanity, but is desperately striving to cope with their own life. And no, it is not about careers and fame. For millennials, issues are far more personal than political. Burnout, depression, addictions, anxiety, guilt, toxic relations and all sorts of emotional breakdowns. It was like this even before the Covid and the war. Now, it is even more obvious. You can see it in their work, you can feel it, but what do they have to say? How do they deal with precarious condition? Is photography a therapy or an addiction? Sex and drugs used to be fun for party-hards but are no more. There are no easy to find solutions and one of few things left is photography. The conference, curated by art critic, historian and curator Adam Mazur (PL), invites us to talk about it.
Participants: Sergey Melnitchenko (UA), Sasha Kurmaz (UA), Visvaldas Morkevicius (LT), Zuzana Pustaiova (SK), Agnieszka Sejud (PL), Inuuteq Storch (DK), Karolina Wojtas (PL), Diana Tamane (LV)
The conference will be held on June 3, 11 AM – 6 PM at the ISSP Gallery. Entrance is free of charge.
View from the exhibition “To Fall in Love, Click Here.” , curated by the winner of the RPB - NEXT 2021 “Emerging Curator!” Award Tīna Pētersone
Discussion on curatorial aspects in today’s art ecosystem
at the Pilot gallery
Since 2020, the global and local art space has fundamentally changed, becoming polarized and being rebuilt under the influence of the pandemic and the war started by Russia. Geopolitical upheavals directly affect financial processes, as well as contribute to events that reduce the observance of democratic policy, both in the formation of countries and their cultural policies. Within this fragile ecosystem, it is important to acknowledge the power of art processes, highlighting the role of the curator, who works as a mediator between artistic creativity and regulating the temperature of socio-political turbulence.
Curatorial processes are influenced and often limited by the financial and volatility-related risks dictated by the external environment, which is why it is necessary to highlight them publicly and identify progressive directions of development based on open cooperation. The people invited to participate in the joint discussion are professionals in the field, who spend their everyday lives constantly and actively working to ensure the continued existence of their institutions, as well as to continue to fulfill the mission of creating an inclusive, transparent, creative and interdisciplinary development-oriented art environment.
The discussion is curated by the art historian and curator Antra Priede.
Participants: Kaspars Groševs (LV), Solvita Krese (LV), Maija Rudovska (LV)
The discussion will be held on June 8 at 6 PM the Pilot gallery, in Latvian. Entrance is free of charge.
Title image: detail from Elena Subach (UA), from the series Grandmothers on the Edge of Heaven, 2019 - to be expositioned in
RPB - NEXT 2023 Outdoor project at Riga public transport stops May 29 - June 11
