Memoryescapes<\/i>\u00a0is artist Anna Ceipe\u2019s first personal exhibition at the Kim? Contemporary Art Centre. In order to introduce the exhibition\u2019s thematic register, we must turn to the notion of memoryscapes \u2013 or memory landscapes\u00a0<\/i>that\u00a0<\/i>are part of (mental) space-time, envisioned through recording of both\u00a0objective<\/i>, social and political, as well as cultural and individual, memory. The memoryscapes\u00a0<\/i>that are formed in the mind\u2019s memory stores refer to an environment, place or non-place, which, having retained traces of past eras, interweaves with contemporaneity and the murkiness of its way of life.<\/p>\n
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Memoryscapes thrive through monuments built by various regimes, wild strawberries beaded on a blade of grass, the marking of collective and individual celebrations, yet wither when symbols are demolished with the changing of power or fade until they disappear completely during interruptions in the practising of traditions.<\/p>\n
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Investigation of memory narratives is closely entwined with Ceipe\u2019s artistic practice, bringing together themes arranged in interplay between natural and inorganic materials, with their formal groupings oscillating between spatial installations and objects, as well as fleeting\u00a0sculptural\u00a0<\/i>moments that activate in memory the changeable senses of smell and touch.<\/p>\n
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Behind the scenes,\u00a0Memoryescapes<\/i>\u00a0touches upon the search for the ideal landscape \u2013\u00a0the picturesque<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 during the Enlightenment, contesting the kind of aesthetics in which a view of nature is soil for the creation of pictorial, painterly landscapes. No longer a paean to the sublime in nature, these scenes are a sentiment-driven record captured by literally gazing out of the window. In this uncritical search for picturesque surrogate beauty, the window once served as a frame and boundary for the view, in order to bring indoors what was captured outside with the help of vision.<\/p>\n
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This movement influences the central group of works in the exhibition:<\/span>\u00a0molten glass reliefs which resemble windows with irregular outlines; the forms carved on their brittle surfaces hide visual traces left by crumbs of Ceipe\u2019s own memoryscape\u00a0\u2013<\/span>\u00a0from places, experiences and sensations. Fragmented, selective, notional and abstract, landscape here is a document in which memory fragments frozen in imagination can be read. Deeply intimate, nostalgic and personal, these \u201cwindows\u201d in Ceipe\u2019s memoryscape are simultaneously neutralised from reality, released by the saturated colour and barely legible; they provide nods, they are suggestive, but not didactic or emotionally eloquent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The evasiveness and ambiguity of memory, its linkage and friction with the conventionalities of history opens up space for a more distanced look at every individual\u2019s own essence and experience. Like foreign bodies, intrusive and fleeting, memories are at times solidly intense and present, at times alienated, ghostly and unrecognisable. Yet at the same time, each gesture, even the most ordinary, is experienced as a ritual repetition of a transcendent practice in the primeval identification of action and meaning. With the appearance of traceable imprints, intermediacy and the distance of time, we no longer find ourselves in actual memories, but rather in the slipstream of the fundamental institution of history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This memoryscape or memory of landscapes, this remembering or flight into memory. We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left. 1<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1 \u00a0In reference to the seminal analysis of collective and social memory by French historian Pierre Nora in his essay Between Memory and History (Nora, 1989)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anna Ceipe<\/b>\u00a0(1990) is an artist from Latvia. She graduated from the Programme of Visual Communication at the Department of Audiovisual Art at the Art Academy of Latvia (2016) and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium (2015). Personal exhibitions:\u00a0Links Through Release<\/i>, SPAREWHEEL, Brussels (2023);\u00a0Notes from the Floating Ground<\/i>, Hoib Gallery, Tallinn (2022);\u00a0Things After Things<\/i>, 427 Gallery, Riga (2020);\u00a0Seeing Oasis<\/i>, LOW Gallery, Riga (2018);\u00a0The Unbreakable Remains in Silence<\/i>, Kalnciema Quarter Gallery, Riga (2017). Group exhibitions:\u00a0Liquids<\/i>, Riga Porcelain Museum, Riga (2022);\u00a0DGS Dream<\/i>, MABOCA festival, Madona (2021);\u00a0To Exhibit in Case of Emergency<\/i>,\u00a0Cit\u00e9 Internationale des Arts<\/i>, Paris (2021); NADA Miami 2020, LOW Gallery, Riga (2020);\u00a0Palette: Three-legged Evidence\u00a0<\/i>at\u00a0<\/i>Les Parall\u00e8les du sud, Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020);\u00a0Serial Solutions (Banalaics)<\/i>, Riga Circus Elephant Stables, Riga (2020);\u00a0Melos<\/i>, Creative Studio of the Exhibition Hall ARSEN\u0100LS, Riga (2019).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Supporters: Ministry of Culture, State Culture Capital Foundation, Absolut, Valmiermui\u017ea, KRASO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":418,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"class_list":["post-439","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kim.wrong.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kim.wrong.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kim.wrong.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibition"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kim.wrong.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kim.wrong.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}