For several years, experts and artists from various fields have been implementing the project “Exploring the Complex Past”, which studies the impact of various awkward and complex historical events on the present. The project is international and dedicated to the heritage of the Baltic and Eastern European past. So far, a conference and other events have taken place, but at the end of November the project will culminate in an art exhibition in Riga, at the National Museum of Art.
The exhibition is named “Inconvenient past. Related worlds”And will feature works of art from a variety of genres from eight countries, focusing on the Holocaust, deportations and other harsh experiences of the past, exploring their impact on our present.
Along with artists from the three Baltic States, authors from Ukraine, Poland, Chechnya, Finland and the Netherlands are also participating in the exhibition. In all works, complex themes of the past are viewed from a modern perspective. Often from a less traditional angle than usual.
For example, one of the exhibitors is the Dutch artist Queens Gario, who comes from the Caribbean, and his work focuses on the question: how should Latvia’s connection with the colonial past really be perceived – or as a factor of the nation’s self-confidence, or vice versa?
The curator of the exhibition, Ieva Astahovska, describes the work: “The Quincia installation asked if it was really something to be proud of, or rather it was part of a global and violent colonial history? But he does it very interestingly, combining this story about Tobago with a very interesting view of Latvian songs. He connects these different legacies. ”
Most of the works focus on the 20th century. For example, the Jewish artist Zuzanna Hercberg from Poland recalls the experience of women who took part in the Spanish Civil War, about which we know very little. Especially for the exhibition in Riga, she has included in her series of works two new collages about two Latvian Jewish doctors who also participated in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers – with the aim of resisting right-wing policies in Europe, which began to become threatening in the second half .
Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –—
“And this is also a story about an awkward past,” explains curator Ieva Astahovska. “For example, in the context of Latvia’s history, we associate anything related to the ideas of the left with part of the history of the occupation and the enemy. But it was much, much more complicated. A great many Jewish people became involved in these leftist movements, but it was not simply their arbitrary sympathy for communism, it was actually a struggle for survival. And the fight for their rights. And in the Latvian context, they are those awkward pasts, which are treated very tendently, without wanting to understand their complexity. ” The tragic experience of deportations has been revived by Estonian artist Ūlo Pikkovs in his animation work. At the center of the animation is an apple orchard of a long-abandoned house, which remembers people and their belonging to the places from which they were forcibly separated. Latvian artist Vika Eksta, on the other hand, recalls the war in Afghanistan, in which many people of the Soviet republic, including Latvia, including Vika’s father, were brought against her will, so her work is very personal, using documentaries, letters and photographs. Excerpts from Vika Ecsta’s works in the exhibition “Inconvenient Past. Connected Worlds Photo: Baiba Kušķe – But Aslan Goisum talks about the violence of the Chechen war in his installation, and at the center of it are original plaques with street names collected by the artist on the streets of Grozny. Ieva Astahovska says: “If we look more closely at those plates, we can also see the traces of bullets, in a way we see this history of violence, we reveal itself in a very effective way. It also resonates very strongly in the Latvian context, because many of us remember similar plaques on the streets of our cities, but unlike Chechnya, Latvia gained its independence. ”
Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –—
For many generations to come, the subconscious life of Ukrainians will be affected by the great famine or famine in the early 1930s, artificially caused by the Soviet rule. Ukrainian artists Lia and Andriy Dostlyev speak about it in their graphic series. Ieva Astahovska explains: “Its name is ‘My grandmother told stories about the Holodomor, so I still feel ashamed of throwing food away’.” It was also, in a sense, a performative work, where the authors recorded for almost two months their diary entries – food leftovers that were not eaten. And then the collages have become like screen prints of these leftovers, also capturing the day and what that food is, but they are combined with photographs from various landscapes in Ukraine, which become almost mental maps, because the scale of the Holodomor was inconceivable. And even if there are memorials in Ukraine today, they are certainly unable to comment on the enormous scale and enormous trauma it left on the people who survived. But, of course, a huge, huge number did not survive. And in a way, future generations are living with this trauma. ”
Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –– Photo: Baiba Kušķe –—
The second curator of the exhibition is Margareta Tali, an Estonian living in Rotterdam. She admits that the so-called body memory is one of the main motives that permeates other works in the exhibition. Namely, it is now a proven phenomenon that our bodies also preserve the painful experiences and injuries of our ancestors. According to Margareta Tali, these injuries of our ancestral past affect us both consciously and unconsciously. They can manifest themselves through various reactions and emotions, why in certain situations we behave in this way and not differently, and sometimes we cannot even understand ourselves. Margareta Tali also emphasizes that the exhibition is designed in such a way that we can look at the historical processes not only with a local view, but much more broadly, thus seeing the connections that unite us all – not without reason the exhibition is called “Inconvenient Past. Connected worlds ”. The exhibition is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art and will be on view at the Dome Hall of the National Museum of Art from Saturday, November 28, until the beginning of February next year. –
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