Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025 opens today
Opening program of the Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025
The Riga Photography Biennial (RPB) – NEXT 2025 starts today with its central events – exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’ by ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste and ‘Difficult Objects’ – a solo exhibition by Ruudu Ulas, the winner of the NEXT 2025 Award ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography!’.
‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’
John Huntington, ‘Protective Figures’, installation/sculptures, 2021–2022
NEXT Award ‘Emerging Curator!’ was launched in 2021 in collaboration with the Curatorial Studies of the Art Academy of Latvia to provide a platform for young Latvian curators and highlight the role of the curator as a creative personality and mediator between artists, works of art, viewers and society within contemporary cultural processes. The NEXT 2025 Award was open to young curators from the Baltic States. This year’s winner Roberta Atraste (LV, 1998) has a BA in Art History and Theory from the Art Academy of Latvia and is currently continuing her studies in the Curatorial Studies of the Art Academy of Latvia.
Roberta Atraste
In the exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’, Roberta Atraste turns to the bureaucratic and administrative processes involved in art. Although these practices existed even before conceptual art, it was in the 1960s that artists began functioning as “managers” and “clerks”. Those in the field of visual art were among the first to entrust the production of their work to others – not in order to completely erase or dematerialise the art object, as is sometimes believed, but rather to engage in such activities as registering, documentation, archiving, listing and indexing. In art history, these practices are sometimes related to the concept of institutional criticism. Yet it is also possible to see them in another light, stressing the often-ignored absurd, poetic, psychological and sometimes even pleasurable aspects of these procedures. The aim of the exhibition is to study and present the aesthetics of bureaucratic and administrative processes in a contemporary context.
Evija Pintāne, ‘Checkered Notebook’, fragment, p. 18, 17x21cm, 2018
Exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’ will be on view at the Art Academy of Latvia’s experimental art space ‘Pilot’ from April 25 till June 6.
Participants: John Huntington (SE), Arta Kauliņa (LV), Sara Krøgholt Trier (DK), Katariin Mudist (EE), Evija Pintāne (LV). Scenographer: Krišjānis Beļavskis (LV).
‘Difficult Objects’
Ruudu Ulas, from the series ‘Difficult Objects’, 2021–2025
The Award ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography!’ was first held in 2016 and since 2019 has been organised in cooperation with ISSP Gallery to encourage young artists from the Baltic States to reveal a conceptually deep, original view of their times in visually powerful works. Seeking the Latest in Photography!’ winners Ruudu Ula’s (1987, EE) solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’ will be on view at the ISSP Gallery from 26 April to 30 May. Curator: Inga Brūvere (LV).
Ruudu Ulas
Ruudu Ulas holds a BA from Glasgow School of Art and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London. In 2023, Ruudu also won the London Photographers’ Gallery Young Talent Award. ‘Difficult Objects’ explores tangible and psychological intersections through photography. Each work navigates the space between the familiar and the unknown, challenging us to reflect on our personal relationships with ubiquitous public and private structures. This exhibition seeks to depict the ways in which urban spaces and domestic spheres collide and merge, leaving strangely shaped gaps in which the imagination attempts to interpret connections.
Riin Maide (EE), "Behind the print. A reconstruction", 2023
At the opening night of the exhibition at ISSP Gallery the other finalists of the 2025 competition Klaus Leo Richter (LT), Riin Maide (EE), Keiu Maasik (EE), Gedvile Tamosiunaite (LT) and Paula Punkstiņa (LV) also will present their work. ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography!’ also has long-standing partners who present their special prizes.
Program name ‘Next’ embodies the idea of movement. ‘Next’ is a transition—never safe, predictable or known in advance, it has a direct and irrevocable presence that constantly poses the question: Is whatever comes next linked to what was before?
‘What Is Next? The Landscape of Polish Photography Today’
Piotr Uklański (PL), "Untitled (Chopin’s Grief)", 2018
The opening program of RPB—NEXT 2025 will be complemented by a lecture ‘What Is Next? The Landscape of Polish Photography Today’ by an art historian, curator, and assistant professor Adam Mazur (PL), focusing on Polish photography today. The marginalisation of traditional associations, the crisis and change in the definition of festivals, and even the creation of new models of photographic institutions are all part of the new institutional landscape of Polish photography.
Adam Mazur. Photo: Lukasz Sokol
‘To avoid boredom, during the speech I will show the latest achievements of living masters, such as Tadeusz Rolke, Wojciech Plewinski and Józef Robakowski, as well as acomplished artists of the middle generation, such as Rafał Milach, Joanna Piotrowska, Aneta Grzeszykowska and Weronika Gęsicka. The AI experiments of Nicolas Grospierre, Robert Kuśmirowski, Igor Pisuk and Szymon Rogiński will be contrasted with the return to analogue of Aga Sejud and Sophie Thun, the activism of Diana Lelonek and Tytus Szabelski, and the activities of commercial stars Sonia Szostak and Zuza Krajewska. The talk as a whole will allow you to form an opinion on the condition of Polish photography and potential prospects for the future,’ says Adam Mazur.
The lecture by Adam Mazur will take place on 30 April at 18.00 in the ISSP Gallery, the event will be held in English.
Title image: Ruudu Ulas, from the series ‘Difficult Objects’, 2021–2025
