Path Unsure
________________________________
On perspectives of Latvian art organisations
…Imagine if the apocalypse took the form of a cocktail party
David Foster Wallace, “Big Red Son”
April marched forth with its sudden wave of warmth and tender colours in the sky. The evening just began to outstretch itself beyond the working hours, and in Riga we would habitually spend one of the month’s final days on the evening gallery tour, brought by the Riga Last Thursdays project. Some of us had just come back from Venice and happily laid our eyes to rest among more timid and quiet Latvian art, though still being high and residually ecstatic on that Adriatic air, legs used to running circles from one pavilion to another.
That month, our Riga Last Thursdays walk would end in front of the National Museum of Art, with the “Unparalleled Surrealities” exhibition in a just-opened ASNI gallery. There was a bookshop next to it, Novaya Riga, and before the closing hour we would catch a relaxing moment or two: a unique place in the city where we Russian speakers could buy the newest art theory, contemporary fiction or underground poetry and not feel crammed in some dusty cellar, away from public eyes.
By June, Riga Last Thursdays was gone, same as Novaya Riga. Art is an ecosystem, a network, some of its parts are more distant than others, though not less important. When any part is lost, you cannot help but feel a slight uneasiness: a cold spot left in that place of absence. When a cultural organisation disappears, first, the public is taken aback, but soon seemingly moves on — it's truly a fleeting world we live in here in Latvia. Sometimes great undertakings just don’t last. It’s a reality of life, and no one questions it. If there is a lament, it’s neither long nor loud.
For Latvian art, last year was one of both gains and losses, a swift year. Great projects were planned — and thus I’ve seen many international artists, gallerists and curators coming to Riga and leaving perplexed by the state of our art industry — by its paradoxical synthesis of talent and dismay. Mostly it was about the numbers: they were shocked to hear that a great piece of art may be bought for a few hundred euros or to find out that a yearly budget of our art organisations wouldn’t even cover monthly utilities back in Paris or Berlin. Sometimes they would also be astonished to discover amazing artists whom no one outside Latvia knows — and find out that, likewise, there is no one to make them known.
Our conversations would later get on a steadier and brighter course: we would admit that though the aforementioned struggles are true, Latvia is full of talented artists and passionate organisers, curators and theorists who actually know what they are doing. Some would agree out of politeness, but others, I hope, really felt that way. However, what we all would agree upon is that Latvian art organisations need a sudden push, a seismic hit of an immense magnitude, a wake-up call. In the comfort of a café, it seemed like a doable task, just a matter of the right policies, goodwill and strong investment. Going home later, the enchantment would fade away and the realisation hit: It is as if we thread in thick fog, path unsure. And then, as a sudden wave, fatigue comes.
Latvian art is often dangerously inert, but there is so much comfort in inertia: something happens, another thing happens loosely connected to the prior, and it all produces some talks, papers, money even, but ultimately disperses into nothingness — just to reemerge again. Back in art schools, we were full-on ready to bear the precarity and confusion of the creative career path because we believed that art must strive for greatness and that this network of daring organisations and visionary individuals actually want to do something that will leave a mark. When art gives up such tasks, it becomes merely an artistic process, which is not much different from the simplest biological metamorphoses of bacteria.
In Summer 2023, Latvia lost the Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art, an ambitious institution with the power to lift others with it. After less than a year, the Riga Last Thursdays announced its halt. Funny enough, organisations and projects like these never die, being put on indefinite pauses until better times. In a fashion of elegiac symbolism, it always happens in warm seasons, as if a sudden blow of cold wind freezes flowers to their lethargic limbo. I know that our artists, as well as Latvian art itself, will be fine. Paraphrasing W.H.Auden,
art makes nothing happen, it survives.
And exactly in this lies its gentle and fierce strength, I would add. But what about the institutions? Will the network endure? Writing for Dailė last year, it strikes me how much more positivity I had in me: I remember thinking that though we do indeed stumble and go in circles from time to time, trust should be put in the process. We will find the way through, we are fighting an uphill battle, but not in vain — it got less certain now, after just a year. Fatigue envelops and embraces us like a soft promise of deadly rest.
Some say that complaining is inherent Latvian vice, and perhaps I’ve caught that malaise myself, though I wish to believe that I’ve just grown out of uninvolved observations and started to get emotional over our art industry’s tribulations.
There are two most pressing problems we are facing: we are poor and we are small. A country can have a vibrant art life while being either poor and large, or rich and small, but having an under-performing economy and a shrinking population is just a deadly combination. Every time a budget cut has to be made, it will be done at the expense of art first and prior. I won’t even argue that art is indeed often a luxury that can be cast out when times are tough — but that does not make it less pitysome.
In Latvia, the main source of state sponsorship of arts comes from VKKF, the State Cultural Capital Fund. This year, it received 213 projects with a total budget of 1 227 879 euros. Out of that, only 69 were supported, fully or partially — and the allocated budget was only 301 246 euros. Among those receiving the funding are many important galleries and other art organisations, such as Kim?, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, galleries 427 and Alma. However, others, like the already lamented Riga Last Thursdays or highly impactful Tīrkultūra radio didn’t get a cent. This begs a question, how much progress in art exactly can be made on 301 246 euros divided across 69 organisations — about 4365 per project? It’s survival money.
At the same time, I won’t blame politicians that much: it is better for the state to be as far away from contemporary art as possible, as few people in the high cabinets understand what exactly we are doing. Some more funding would be nice since large art institutions pay hundreds of thousands in taxes and bring even more via tourism, and smaller organisations are engaged in public good by exposing the people to something thought-provoking on their daily strolls. Otherwise, the Latvian state’s actions and inactions in the field of art don’t fluctuate much from its overall performance in other fields. It is the community and private initiative that our hopes should be directed towards.
We see that a new contemporary art museum, Stasys, has opened in Lithuanian Panevėžys, while we don’t even have one in the capital. We also see that Estonian galleries like Tallinn-based Temnikova & Kasela show their artist at fairs of the scale of Liste Art Basel, we see a successful Kogo gallery in Tartu representing and supporting artists, establishing connections with the world — all the while our art seems to go on a spiral, eternally locked in its sad trajectory. Only in our boldest dreams we can imagine a gallery from a provincial Latvian city being involved in art markets, representing artists at least on a regional level. Honestly, even in Riga, it is hard to find a gallery with a strong commercial platform.
So, if not strong commercially, Latvian art organisations could have succeeded in the non-profit field. What was Riga historically known for? It was a place of intersections, of many communities leaving their marks on the land, hewing stone from which they would build their churches and city walls, paving roads through marshes and dark forests of the country. Just like Venice with its trade routes and cosmopolitan spirit, our city was a perfect location for a biennial — a well-connected, welcoming port with legacy and future, inviting everyone for a conversation. This is the spirit from which RIBOCA, the Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art, was born in 2016, and the case of its downfall just seven years after is especially telling — a project that opened with a blast, pouring millions into the local economy and putting Riga into international art spotlight of the highest calibre was put into indefinite lethargic sleep, becoming a victim of a senseless smear campaign, simply out of spite and envy. The criticism of Russian financing crossed out the help the biennial provided to Ukrainian refugees in Latvia, not to mention the impact it had on making Latvia the centre of Baltic contemporary art. Sadly enough, the critics even ignored the fact that the biennial gave up all Russian money, being financed by the US-based foundation since the moment of the invasion in Ukraine.
It is very telling that even now, when mentioning to someone from the international art community that you are from Riga, one of the first things they remember about the city is the biennial — they remember it and they miss it.
Back in 2018, the artist Adrián Villar Rojas made a project for the first RIBOCA — he installed nests of hornero, the national bird of his home country of Argentina, all around Riga — on “window sills, balconies and cornices, signposts, doorways and walls”. Made of mud, straw and rubble, these nests were almost unnoticeable, though they were all around us nevertheless. No one, except the artist, knew the location of all the nests, and even now, when Riga Biennial is gone, I still find the nests in the city’s lonely alleyways, in the courtyards of condemned buildings and under graffiti-covered bridges — little monuments of great undertakings.
In contrast, Kim? and Zuzeum contemporary art centres remain two bright spots in our clouded sky. Just this June, Kim? has launched its art festival EDEN in a new space — a large former school on Hanzas Street, in the heart of Riga’s Quiet Centre, near a growing Skanstes business quarter and just across the street from the site which once was planned to house Latvian museum of contemporary art. The EDEN festival itself is nothing to write home about, giving an impression of a show hastily constructed out of necessity rather than inspiration, featuring the usual Kim? artists like Santa France or Evita Vasiljeva, and international guests such as Laura Kaminskaitė and Nikita Kadan. Though the opening was quite impressive, with a remarkable performance by the Young Boy Dancing Group, in the following weeks, the building looked rather hollow, sparsely displayed artworks haunting the dilapidated rooms and hallways like ghosts, almost unnoticeable.
It is much more interesting to think about the building itself: this former college, vacant since 2015, was given to Kim? by our government, and that’s where its support ends. It will take years until that huge new building is fully ready, but the fact that this happened is still inspiring. It is calculated that the renovation will require 2.9 million euros by 2027, and the art centre will be responsible for allocating these funds.
As the plan goes, there will be four main functions for the new site: exhibitions, international residencies, artist studios, and an educational centre. Riga indeed lacks such a space, and in normal circumstances, these functions would be performed by a contemporary art museum. However, since we still lack one, private organisations have to step up. There are many small art institutions in Riga, but without such big players, the ecosystem can’t be sustainable. I’m eager to see how Kim? will develop this site — we have 3-5 years in which the results should be visible and the building accessible to the public, otherwise the government may take it back.
Zuzeum, perhaps the largest private art organisation in Latvia, continues to seem on a route of steady progress. They are doing exactly what a good contemporary art centre should be doing: bringing in the community, constantly breathing life into its walls. I’d personally mark three highlights of this year for Zuzeum:
First was the 3rd edition of their Zandele Art Fair, which this time didn’t only sell pieces from Zuzāns Collection itself, but also invited other Latvian galleries and individual artists to join. In contrast to Vilnius, Riga doesn’t have a large regional art fair, and thus Zandele became sort of a middle ground: it's still compact enough so it does not compete with ArtVilnius, but it is a good test of force and a proper fair experience for the locals. The numbers turned out quite good, and there is hope for a new edition.
Another highlight: in June, they opened “Grotto Far From the Sea”, an exhibition commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Orbita text-group. Orbita’s influence on Latvian art cannot be underestimated, and this surprisingly laconic exhibition managed to show the exact artistic power of the group with just a few works.
Final highlight: around the time this text is finished, in the first week of July, Zuzeum, together with VV Foundation and Artterritory will present a two-day programme of contemporary art discussions and workshops on the LAMPA Conversation Festival in the town of Cesis. LAMPA is a unique and important event for Latvia, a place of discussion on all matters political, social and cultural, but until now it never engaged with the theme of contemporary art. We’ll see how it goes, but the initiative itself lies quiet in accordance with Zuzeum’s apparent strategy: to widen the borders of contemporary art audience in the country, developing a programme that is interesting for different parts of the public, from teenagers to seniors.
If Kim? will indeed succeed in rebuilding its new headquarters, then we will have a tandem in Riga, with Zuzeum engaging more with a general audience, while Kim? being responsible for working with arts professionals via residencies, studios and educational programmes. It is as if the non-existent Latvian contemporary art museum has divided in itself.
So, in just a year Latvia lost Riga Biennial and Riga Last Thursdays, but Kim? and Zuzeum, in contrast, had quite exciting things going on. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that since last Summer we lost more than we gained, and there seems to be no end to such a sad trend. The margin of safety for Latvian art organisations is so thin that every time one of them doesn’t get the VKKF or other grant funding, it is forced to close or drastically reduce its operations. All the while, private sponsors are doing their job: Jānis Zuzāns doesn’t spare money on Zuzeum, VV Foundation, another major private art patron, sponsors dozens of projects every year, corporations like BTA or Rietumu Bank continue to build their collections thus giving major support to local artists — but this list is nearly extensive. There are 10 to 20 individuals and organisations in Latvia that regularly support contemporary art, and among them, just 5-7 can be called major patrons. Is this enough for the whole country? It allows to maintain the status quo, but not to have any development. So, as trivial as it may be, the perspectives of Latvian art organisations fully depend on money and the ability to raise them. Since the local donors are already stretched thin, the attention should be directed outside of the country — I wholeheartedly believe that the endurance of Latvian art institutions in the upcoming decade will depend on our ability to attract international benefactors, to inspire at least our neighbours with the idea that Latvian art deserves not only to survive but to bloom. However, perhaps, we first have to convince ourselves that we deserve this.
Despite hardships, Latvian art repeatedly punches above its weight, but for how long can we endure?