The Latvian Pavilion at the 61st La Biennale di Venezia

The Latvian Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia presents MAREUNROL’S and Bruno Birmanis / Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia

Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia presents newly commissioned work by the interdisciplinary artist duo MAREUNROL’S in dialogue with the archives of Untamed Fashion Assemblies (UFA), experimental festivals of fashion, art, and performance founded by the artist Bruno Birmanis and held in Latvia between 1990 and 1999. The pavilion approaches the Assemblies as a space where freedom is rehearsed, binding the past and present as moments of political rupture in need of utopian artistic thinking.

Emerging in the unstable interval of the Soviet empire’s collapse, and before global capitalism took hold, UFA dissolved the boundaries between fashion and visual art through intersections with music, drag, dance, and club culture. The second edition took place in 1991 amidst a politically charged atmosphere, shortly after the Barricades, a flashpoint of civic resistance against the Soviet forces in Latvia. Defying both systems, the Assemblies were driven by a desire to test freedom in its uncontained forms.

Playful, collaborative, and at times chaotic, UFA brought students and international stars together on the same stage. Young Baltic designers such as Bruno Birmanis, Juozas Statkevičius, and Sandra Straukaitė appeared alongside Paco Rabanne, Vivienne Westwood, Zandra Rhodes, and Andrew Logan. Viktor & Rolf were among those who passed through the festivals as students and went on to become global icons.

The pavilion is conceived by MAREUNROL’S as a backstage—a space of preparation, invisible labour, misunderstandings, improvisation, and joy, where a utopian dimension becomes most palpable. An architectural assemblage of clothing racks holds artefacts and stories, becoming a metaphor for the dreams and tensions of the past and present alike. Recurring motifs from the duo’s practice, textile sculptures and birds, here evoke an atmosphere of fragility and hope, further explored by the accompanying sound, designed by Iļja Krūmiņš and Rolands Pēterkops. Across the installation, thematic sections bring together transregional exchange, political freedom, avant-garde experimentation, ecstatic celebration, and gender play. A multi-channel video installation re-animates the Assemblies through footage from filmmaker Henry Stein’s video archive.

Today, as political and cultural systems again face rupture, the Latvian Pavilion returns to the Assemblies to ask how freedom, risk, and the future might be imagined—and what can be carried forward from past dreams to envision alternatives to the present.

Dedication to Cameramen (in order of appearance) Bus from London, 1992, Misunderstanding1990-94, Parties 1990-4, Fashion Shows 1990-99, Opening Day 1992, Openings Dome Square 1991, Motor Museum 1994, Backstage 1990-94

Titled Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia, the exhibition for the Latvian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2026 is accompanied by a fully illustrated book with contributions from the curators, artists, and participants of the Untamed Fashion Assemblies (UFA).

Commissioner: Solvita Krese
Organisers: LCCA (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art)
Exhibition title: Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia
Artists: MAREUNROL’S—Rolands Pēterkops and Mārīte Mastiņa-Pēterkopa 
and Bruno Birmanis
Curators: Inga Lāce and Adomas Narkevičius

Commissioned by  Ministry of Culture of Republic of Latvia
Organized by Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art
In collaboration with Riga City Council – www.liveriga.com

MAREUNROL’S and Bruno Birmanis at the Latvian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2026. Photo: Kristine Madjare

About the artists

MAREUNROL’S is a Riga-based interdisciplinary artist duo—Mārīte Mastiņa-Pēterkopa and Rolands Pēterkops.  Working at the intersection of visual art and design, they continually push boundaries, often positioning fashion beyond its traditionally functional role. The duo’s distinctive approach is a poetic expression of magical realism, emphasising narrative as an artwork, expressed through their interdisciplinary practice, which comprises fabric and textile sculptures, fashion design collections, installations, video and sound art, drawings, photography collages, and costume design for opera and theatre.

MAREUNROL’S have participated in numerous international competitions, festivals, biennials, and group exhibitions, including the Arnhem Fashion Biennal, International Talent Support (ITS) competition, Barcelona 080, RIBOCA 2, The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, and more. They have also exhibited their work at art venues such as the contemporary art centre kim?, Riga, La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, Casino Luxembourg, The Riga Contemporary Art Space, among others. In 2009, they received two acclaimed prizes at the 24th international fashion and photography festival Hyères and in 2016, they were among ten European nominees for the prestigious International Woolmark Prize. MAREUNROL’S made history as the first-ever Latvian brand to be included in the official programme of Paris Fashion Week, and their garments and artworks are in the archive collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art, as well as numerous private collections, including the VV Foundation. Their retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Riga was the museum’s most visited exhibition of 2019, and in 2020 it was nominated for the Kilogram of Culture prize in the ‘best visual arts exhibition’ category. In 2024, their exhibition Invisible Exercises was nominated for the Purvītis Prize, one of Latvia’s most prestigious art prizes. The duo is also active in education, appearing as guest lecturers in art academies all over the world.

Bruno Birmanis (BB) is an artist, performance maker, and curator whose practice unfolds at the intersection of conceptual fashion, the body, and spatial imagination. His work approaches fashion not as a functional system but as a cultural language—capable of articulating ideas, emotions, and collective experience.

Birmanis graduated from the Riga School of Applied Arts as a metal designer and jewellery artist. Since the mid-1980s, he has been actively engaged in alternative and experimental fashion, exhibiting and performing across Eastern and Western Europe. In the late 1980s, in collaboration with designer Uģis Rūķītis, he created Postbanalism Ball, a seminal multimedia [WP1] performance work staged over thirty times across the Soviet Union. The project was widely recognised by international media as a defining expression of perestroika-era cultural transformation.

In the early 1990s, BB initiated and created the Untamed Fashion Assembly, an independent platform dedicated to alternative fashion and performative practices. Emerging at a moment of political and social rupture, the Assembly became a transnational space for freedom, non-conformism, and creative risk, bringing together young artists from across Europe and redefining fashion as a performative and critical act.

Birmanis’s works and performances have been presented in Rome, Venice, Paris, London, Moscow, and Vilnius, including at the Latvian National Museum of Art. Alongside his artistic practice, he has worked across architecture, interior design, and visual culture, collaborating with leading architectural studios and producing large-scale cultural and fashion events.

Currently, Birmanis is also active as an educator. He heads the Styling Department at the Liepāja Secondary School of Art, Music and Design and lectures internationally. His recent work focuses on process as a generator of value, intergenerational collaboration, and artistic practice as a vital form of cultural responsibility.