“From Stardust to Lush Sprouts”
The Latvia Ceramics Biennale Returns in 2025 with Its Fifth Edition
In 2025, the Latvia Ceramics Biennale will make its highly anticipated return to the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils and cultural venues across Latvia. Headlined by the prestigious Martinsons Award, the Biennale’s fifth edition will bring together today’s leading artists in a vibrant programme of exhibitions and other events designed to celebrate contemporary ceramics in all the medium’s extraordinary diversity.
The Latvia Ceramics Biennale 2025 comes with an enigmatic theme – “From Stardust to Lush Sprouts”, designed to spark reflection on the many forms of matter, their resilience, and shifting value over time. Armed with discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology, and other life sciences, we now know that for billions of years, nothing existed – except for everything that somehow already was. The fundamental elements of matter smashed into each other at extraordinary cosmic speeds, eventually forming nebulae of gas and dust. These early clusters of primeval matter coalesced, creating all we know today: innumerable stars, our Sun, and planets. On some of them, on one for sure, life as we know it has emerged and then evolved into innumerable forms, from lush palms rising up towards the sky to chubby hippos churning sunlit waters.
Through its impressive exhibition programme, the Latvia Ceramics Biennale attempts to pin down the elusive points of reference that transform material into something that has added value and new meaning. This time, it asks the question: is the almighty, all-controlling human hand the only one that holds the power to create, or do entirely independent processes unfold in parallel to its activity, transforming an initially amorphous mass of clay into creative output capable of holding information? The works selected for the Biennale’s exhibitions will reflect this spectrum of engagement with and impact on the matter – from full control and detailed exploration of material to pieces where the artist allows the matter to express itself while staying in the shadows as a curious observer.
In ceramic art, perhaps more than in any other material art form, there is a strong awareness that we all are nothing more than stardust. And yet, within this dust, complex and compound forms have come to be whose force enables luscious sprouts to shoot from lumpy earth. The same creative force is carrying forth the ever-growing trove of information about the progress of our civilisation in one of its most ancient and enduring mediums – the testimony of ceramic works.
Until 30 April 2025, individual artists and collectives from Latvia and beyond are invited to submit their entries for the 5th Latvia Ceramics Biennale’s headline event – the Martinsons Award international juried exhibition, which is to be unveiled at the Rothko Museum on 5 September 2025. The opening ceremony will also announce the competition’s Gold, Silver, and Bronze award winners in national and international categories. Details on the open call are available on the Rothko Museum’s website.
Title image: Rothko Museum. Photo by Didzis Grodzs
