Left: See from exhibition ‘To Fall in Like, Click Here’. Konstantīns Žukovs ‘Black Carnation 1’, 2021. Right: Irēna Andrejeva ‘Dicks I Haven’t Met’, 2021.
Down a facet avenue in Riga’s Aged Town, the home windows of Pilot — the Art Academy of Latvia’s experimental room — are alight with a new exhibition discovering sexuality, online identities, and the “courting supermarkets that have now turn into a multi-billion industry” (believe: Tinder, Grindr). That the exhibition unfolds in the midst of a world-wide pandemic — with all its constraints on bodily contact, relationship, and intimacy — is misplaced on no-one.
Curated by Tīna Pētersone, winner of a national competition for emerging curators operate by Riga Images Biennial as element of their Up coming 2021 programme, ‘To Tumble in Like, Click on Here’ is an exhibition featuring four Latvian artists. We satisfy them in the gallery’s courtyard to find out how they are using their operate to problem outdated notions of sexuality and id in this submit-Soviet state.
View from exhibition ‘To Drop in Like, Click on Here’. Konstantīns Žukovs ‘Black Carnation 1’, 2021. Riga Photography Biennial – Upcoming 2021. AAL Experimental art area ‘Pilot’. Image/ Madara Gritāne 6
The exhibition is framed by the perform of scenographer Krišjānis Elviks, who made a collection of architectural interventions through the gallery. He describes how he was “inspired by community area and infrastructures of city environments”, manifested in crumbling breeze blocks, flower petals, and bathroom tiles. His response to the exhibition’s premise was infused with his experience of the pandemic.
Krišjānis explains that “dating app culture had a second wave since it was the only location the place you in fact can get some human speak to or flirt. All through Covid, I started off to check out Riga. I started out to consider about the city as a assembly point and inquire myself a problem: is this city designed to fulfill another person? Or does it power you to remain inside and appreciate reality through screens?” Inside the exhibition space, this rigidity is built true as the viewer moves concerning each artist’s set up, usually overlapping and merging together like many tabs open on a browser.
Perspective from exhibition ‘To Slide in Enjoy, Click Here’. Irēna Andrejeva ‘Dicks I Have not Met’, 2021. Riga Pictures Biennial – Next 2021. AAL Experimental artwork room ‘Pilot’. Photograph: Madara Gritāne.jpg
Irēna Andrejeva’s operates – electronic tapestries of dick pics hung in pinkish tones – replicate upon the concern of male exhibitionism whilst navigating the applications the “unexpected and uncomfortable intrusion of a virtual impression into a personalized space”. The project was designed from an archive of dick pictures amassed by the artist herself, and the medium – electronic jacquard – echoes the digital mother nature of the experience being examined. As culture ultimately commences to replicate on toxic masculinity and how the patriarchy encroaches on the life of girls (both of those on the net and IRL), Irēna’s textile sorts have a tactile resonance, unruly and repeating, applying linen yarn “in a raw, cooked meat tone, the structure of which resembled muscle mass fibres, blood vessels, tendons”.
See from exhibition ‘To Tumble in Really like, Click Here’. Elizabete Ezergaile ‘On Mute’, 2021. Riga Photography Biennial – Next 2021. AAL Experimental artwork house ‘Pilot’. Photograph: Madara Gritāne.jpg
‘To Fall in Adore, Click Here’ is in numerous techniques a meditation on the city and how it interacts with themes of sexuality and digital id, reflecting a write-up-Soviet era of artists reconciling the past with the present through their work. Elizabete Ezergaile analyses the way in which technologically-mediated interaction transforms connection dynamics in actual life. Her get the job done chimes with the aesthetics of Instagram a furry zebra-print driving seat holds a lavender clutch bag bedazzled with the name ‘Lucifer’, made up of a machete with a metallic scorpion idea.
The artist describes how “the younger generations below have a balanced partnership with sexuality”, and but cultural legacies (and censorship) dwell on. “I did believe about my parents, although generating shots, who are Soviet technology and will not appear from an artwork history. I essentially did not even present them the exhibition, because I knew that they would not be at peace with how I portrayed sexuality… I have approved that they arrive from a diverse background and I do not drive them to understand my function.”
Perspective from exhibition ‘To Slide in Adore, Click Here’. Konstantīns Žukovs ‘Black Carnation 1’, 2021. Riga Photography Biennial – Future 2021. AAL Experimental artwork place ‘Pilot’. Image: Madara Gritāne 3.jpg
Konstantin Zhukov’s undertaking commenced with the Black Carnation Club — an apartment-turned-social space where by nearby adult men would meet for sex in the 1920s, till it was raided by police in 1926. Konstantin demonstrates on how the place as soon as occupied by covert functions this kind of as the Black Carnation Club has been “superseded by a digital house, exactly where costume codes and passwords have given way to emojis and English-language abbreviations. To people whose sexuality lies outside the boundaries of heteronormativity, dating applications are usually the only way to satisfy other men and women securely, for a person evening or right until demise does them section.”
Konstantin determined to invite Grindr customers to a video connect with, ensuing in an installation made up of Iphone portraits — an adjustment manufactured for Covid’s social distancing but which suits the project’s theme, a great deal like Irēna’s use of electronic tapestry. Exhibited amongst questionnaire responses from his topics and sculptural interventions with iPads exhibiting his various nude research, Konstantin describes how “the whole project was accomplished working with my phone — I satisfied my respondents by the application, performed the interviews by way of the video phone calls and made their portraits by generating the screenshots. Both correct to the medium and a testimony to these unprecedented times”.
In April, a homophobic attack happened in Latvia the place a youthful person and his partner were established on fireplace as they slept in their condominium, by a neighbour who was seemingly opposed to their sexuality. One of the younger guys ended up succumbing to his injuries. Konstantin observes that “the assault itself and the law enforcement inaction influenced lots of liberal-minded people in the state. It prompted a few of respondents to amend some of their responses. They made the decision to be much more open in their responses, to make a assertion by showing who they are”.
Of the present political weather, Krišjānis notes that the problem is not immediate censorship, but a much more insidious “passive-aggressive way” of filtering sexualities. “There are just a handful of ‘right’ means and massive ignorance of humanity by itself. As a queer artist I have these doubts continuously — I experience like a non-present human being in this nation but meanwhile I genuinely see the level of performing listed here.”
A sentiment shared is that factors are modifying, and these artists are portion of a new Baltic wave progressively able and empowered to declare by themselves equally at dwelling and internationally — irrespective of whether that be in their artistic get the job done, their politics, or their sexuality.
“I do consider that there are some actually excellent emerging artists in Riga”, Krišjānis tells us in the direction of the end of our exchange, “but I hope that a single working day men and women will take pleasure in their heritage and the place they appear from. I experience that a great deal of artists check out to be Northern because it really is cool Western due to the fact it is wealthy Japanese due to the fact it’s trendy. The Baltics consist of all of this and we just have to respect that and have some self-esteem, which is this region’s key situation.”