Lingerie for the “private state of Latvia”. Iveta Laure’s solo exhibition in Riga / Article / LSM.lv

The exhibition “Never give up!” Can be seen in the gallery of the Latvian Artists’ Union. – conceptual objects and installations of the artist and pedagogue Iveta Laure. First you will notice the skirt fluttering above the fan – you will remember the footage with Marilyn Monroe and you will suspect – it will be about women’s ability to seduce and borderline situations where it has an obscene underline. Or just a footnote.

“It is very important not to lose interest in yourself,” emphasized writer Andris Neiburga. She is a favorite author of Iveta Laure. Iveta offers a very feminine exhibition, which insists that ladies have every right to focus on themselves. However, if the linen is embellished, then so that the irony in this “embellishment” is perceived without problems and first of all. “Beautiful” in the sense of Iveta Laure means amusing and meaningful, and the more “sugary” the reproduction placed on the underwear (the photo showing the Meissen porcelain figurine from the “Riga Stock Exchange” collection is out of competition here), the more active the visitor is.

But the quotes of Boris Bērziņš, Sigismund Vidbergs and even Pietro Tenerāni, which are surrounded by playful lace, really get a new sound.

In Iveta’s performance, the eroticism of classic works, which we used to miss, becomes obvious and at the same time is able to make the seduction of a modern woman more complicated and noble, to make her tricks part of the intellectual game.

The chain of associations that took Iveta to her creative success is fairly easy to trace, and it has her power: she speaks of the obvious.

Are you used to decorating T-shirts with pictures? Here, you don’t need T-shirts, but a combination – the more transparent, the better, so that the body merges with the artist’s ideas about it. Do you claim to love Latvia? But how to put on panties with the letters LV, cut out in the fabric where there are usually hearts? Iveta is ironic. This irony arises in the background of the difference between the citizen’s understanding of beauty and what she offers in place: undoubted beauty is added to attractiveness, sentimentality is sarcastic attitude towards it. And it is suspected that they will be able to live together only in an object of art.

Iveta Laure graduated from the Environmental Art Department of the Latvian Academy of Arts, but obtained the right to organize a solo exhibition at the Latvian Artists’ Union Gallery as a prize for her contribution to the Art Days – 2018. In the exhibition “Never give up!” you can find both new and previously exhibited works – the artist had not yet shown them in Riga. They are both “100 m of art” (2017) and “Prosecco dress – sparkling moments ”(2019) also the object“ Private LV ”(2018, meaning“ private Latvian state ”), which was exhibited in the exhibition“ 100 in Latvian Art ”organized by Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center.

Iveta Laure’s solo exhibition “Never give up!” can be viewed at the Latvian Artists’ Union Gallery in Riga, 11 November embankment 35, until 22 August.

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