Installation view
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The End of Monumental Propaganda, or the Disposable Idols (2021, ceramics in aquarium, fish-farm beluga, dimensions variable)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The End of Monumental Propaganda, or the Disposable Idols (2021, ceramics in aquarium, fish-farm beluga, dimensions variable)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The End of Monumental Propaganda, or the Disposable Idols (2021, ceramics in aquarium, fish-farm beluga, dimensions variable)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, An Ominous Prophecy I-IV (2021, urethane resin, pigment, leather scraps, 92x29 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, An Ominous Prophecy I-IV (detail) (2021, urethane resin, pigment, leather scraps, 92x29 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, An Ominous Prophecy I-IV (detail) (2021, urethane resin, pigment, leather scraps, 92x29 cm)
Installation view
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Will You Be My Slave? No, I Only Serve One God. Where’s the Exit? (2021, glazed ceramics, diagonal 14 cm) / Will You Be My Slave? No, I Only Serve One God. A Short Life Line (2021, glazed ceramics, diagonal 12 cm) / Will You Be My Slave? No, I Only Serve One God. A Temple in Classical Style (2021, glazed ceramics, diagonal 7 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Disenchantment in Pink I (2021, silkscreen print, 150x200 cm)
Installation view
Installation view
Andris Breže, Reflection on Andrejs Upītis' story "Boys of Moss Village” (2021, mixed media, 2021, 77x60x11cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Pointer (2021, urethane rubber, pigment, 26x9 cm)
Installation view
Ēriks Božis, The Two White flags (2021, colorless flags, glass, frame, 100x150 cm)
Ēriks Božis, The Two White flags (2021, colorless flags, glass, frame, 100x150 cm)
Installation view
Sarmīte Māliņa, XXX, (1997/2021, varnished acrylic body, plexiglass, polyethylene tube covered with foil wrapping, lacquered plastic with automotive paint, 110x125x40 cm)
Installation view
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Man’s Swinging Moods (2021, used leather jackets, cardboard, glue, 70x49 cm)
Ojārs Pētersons, Without Change (2021, porcelain, 8 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The End of Solidarity among Nations (2021, used leather jackets, cardboard, glue, 70x43 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The Buyer’s Control of the Space I-V (2021, urethane rubber, pigment, 60x16 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The Buyer’s Control of the Space I-V (detail) (2021, urethane rubber, pigment, 60x16 cm)
Installation view
Ieva Iltnere, Conversation (2021, linen, cotton thread, 200x140 cm)
Installation view
Installation view
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Amulet I (ceramics, 2021, diagonal 13 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Going through the Roof (2021, video collage, materials from Latvian Television archive)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Place at the End of the Table, or Prozit! (2021, glazed ceramics, 31x51x25 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The Progenitor of the Drain Lampreys (2021, cord, leather, glue, ceramics, 31x61x25 cm)
Installation view
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Amulet II (ceramics, 2021, diagonal 13 cm)
Ieva Kraule-Kūna, The Curse of the Ukrainian Fox (2021, cardboard, glue, used leather coat, 100x114 cm)
Six of Swords (reversed): Magical Thinking after the vacuum of belief
It’s a rainy autumn evening, and we’re in a hurry. A dark stairway, a shrill doorbell. A bright light makes its way into the stairway, as the door is ajar. A man in a black satin robe, his eyes dark and his gait mysterious, invites us in. Inside, there are several large aquariums teeming with exotic fish, and frightening swords hang on the walls. I am asked to wait for a while and suggested to take a look at the fish, but, left alone, I cannot take my eyes away from two crossed knives above the door, behind which the silhouette of my mother disappears with him, the man who has drawn up a horoscope about myself for my mother in the form of an audio cassette. The prognosis is not that good.
Three of Coins: at the supermarket with only acorn and a paperclip in the pocket
There is no door to another world behind the coats in the wardrobe. Instead it’s rather a window to lusterless reality: a huge bag full of shaggy bodies in all shades of beige, black noses and empty eyes. I know all of its inhabitants but feign surprise every time when one of them – wrapped up in shiny plastic and tied tight with a ribbon – transforms, from the secret it once was, into a festive present. It’s hardly likely that anyone believes in this affected joy. And thus festive surprises and, possibly, a part of childhood are over even before school has started.
But then an unprecedented sight changes everything: it is them, put up on the wall, levitating as if they were newfound idol deities. Their features are exaggerated and their forms strained caricature-like. They are arranged by size, like me and my classmates at a PE lesson (it is shameful to a girl to be first in line and shameful for a boy to be last). There are seven panthers in bright pink, made from smooth synthetics, and She is the eight one. She is softly pink and downy, at least ten times bigger than her smallest sister and twice as big as I am. She is perfect. Available to anyone at any time. When someone asks me what I want for my eighth birthday, I always say I want her, the gigantic downy panther.
Put together, their weight was the same as hers, but my disappointment was even greater. Two mid-sized pink panthers came into my life, and this is how I learned that surprises are, for the most part, unpleasant.
Five of Clubs: the violent lust for life
The Babel Tower of the solidarity among nations has fallen, and we are building a primitive new culture over its ruins. Untamed fashion shows and untamed people in the twilit Rīga streets. Once a month, my mother is relieved of her wallet while coming home from work. But we’re lucky, because we’re alive. It is of no use to report it to the police. This is real life, not a news story. Lots of blood in the snow, burning cars, and scarcely recognizable body parts. Such are our evenings. Such the panorama of our city.
On the way to school, I see my peers hiding their faces in their sleeves, their future burned by the Moment glue. Only a few of them would grow into adults, into their fathers who wear black leather jackets and gold cross necklaces as uniforms. Their main weapon is not physical superiority but fearlessness – they have never had anything and now they have a violent lust for life, trying to obtain power and money. All the power and money in the world. Only a few of these capitalist crusaders, however, avoided becoming a mess of red and brown which the rest of us cowards without ideals would see every night on the news.
Four of Cups: the realities of everyday life
A Finlandia candy, spat into a cast iron bathtub where a pencil and a living lamprey have been lost down the drain. It was an honest mistake, but it’s normal for a preschooler to have a Prozit candy, emptied by an adult, just like the habit to celebrate every turn of life, year and week shouting “cheers!” far too many times is a norm. Bad habits are preserved even when the old ideals have long since been rejected and substituted with new virtues and new idols. The crow caws three times, a ray of sunshine is reflected in a raindrop, and everything is finished by now. Two-tailed fox, will you be our totem animal? No, child, I am but an accessory made of flesh cuddled around your mother’s neck, a reminder of recent events, of a dangerous raincloud. A shadow an overly bright light has left behind. No, let’s hide under the bed instead. No, let’s not sacrifice our lives for the public. Duties towards the collective and obedience were never in vogue in my family, neither now nor back then. A black and white image the size of a postcard warns you not to approach the windows. It is on the kitchen table. By the window. We’re sitting facing them. I say that we shouldn’t be here, but they laugh at me.
A group’s ability to change its future marks my individual inability to change anything.
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