EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME PARTICIPANTS

Līna Birzaka-Priekule (1990) is an art curator and researcher. She has studied Italian language and culture at the Latvian Academy of Culture, completed a postgraduate course in art history at the Latvian Academy of Arts and is currently studying for her PhD degree. Since 2016 she has been a curator for the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art and mounts contemporary art shows at the Arsenāls Creative Workshop. She is one of the presenters of the radio show Artistic Gymnastics: Conversations about the Visual and since 2019 heads the Purvītis Prize team of experts.

Jonas Büchel (1965) born in the summer heat of the mid 1960s, learning the design patterns of life and joy in his parents' planning office and in an industrial small town of the Ruhr area in Germany: Industry, mines, the 'never-ending-city', football with a strong emotional bond between humans and their industrial environment. Studies of photography and design with continuing studies in social work, social planning and cultural management. 25 years of design, social & cultural work and creative urbanism practice in nearly all European regions. In the last 15 years concentrating on Germany, Croatia, Finland and the Baltic States, specifically Latvia. Creative foci: Emotions, space and time - the individual and its groups. Creative tools: Community development, moderation & mediation, urbanism, environmental perceptions, and photography. To observe and analyse, to foster individual and social freedom are the central elements of Jonas life and work.

Atis Egliņš-Eglītis (1984) is Head of Administration of the Cēsis District Council. His expertise comes mostly from experience in public administration, heading various projects and initiatives. Former Head of the Project Department of Liepāja University and the Liepāja Business Incubator of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia. Working at Liepāja City Council, Egliņš-Eglītis managed various projects dealing with development of new media art and international cultural projects and founded the Liepāja Creative Industry Cluster. He has contributed to international scientific publications on the subjects of development of creative cities, creative quarters, start-up ecosystems, and resident involvement in location development.

Ulrika Ferm, PhD (1972) is an artist and Professor at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her often site-specific projects involve in-depth research and tackle historical and socio-political topics. She works primarily in photography and installation. She is a member of the artist collective Platform in Vaasa, which presents performance art and other site and situation specific disciplines. Ferm has broad curatorial and organizational experience and has received numerous grants, prizes and nominations.

Santa France (1993) is a digital artist, working with 3D software and exploring various ways of using it in web collage, video and creating animated GIF images and digital illustrations. The hyper-realistically sterile background and contrasting organic and man-made objects, typical for her compositions, reveal both the visual language peculiarities of the software used to create them and addresses problems of present-day existence: the digital culture, self- reflection, nostalgia and loneliness linked with life on-line.

Evy Jokhova is an artist currently based between Lisbon, London & Vienna. Evy Jokhova graduated MA Political Communications, Goldsmiths College, MA Fine Arts, Royal College of Art, and BA Fine Arts, Central Saint Martins. Jokhova is the recipient of numerous awards including the Arts Council Individual Grants Award, Royal Academy Schools Fellowship, Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award, and Wien Kultur Funding and Amsterdam Fonds voor Kultur (AFK) Grant. Solo projects include: Between these lines I operate, Galeria Foco, Lisbon (2019); Weighed down by stones, Lily Brooke, London; I dance for you my edifice, l’etrangere, London (both 2018); The Shape of Ritual, commissioned by Belvedere Museum Vienna and sound:frame, Vienna (2017); Towering in the conditions of fragments, Passen-gers, London (2017); Staccato, Marcelle Joseph Projects, UK (2016).

Liene Jurgelāne (1982) is a curator, producer of cultural events, faciliator, and a becoming anthropologist. For more than 10 years, Liene has provided format for various talks and interaction among people – creative workshops, seminars, discussions, art interventions, cultural programs, festivals, etc. In her practice, Liene combines the spheres of culture and education, working simultaneously in creative industries and the area of antidiscrimination and global education. Liene has been the head of the cultural program at Kaņepe Culture Center, she is one of the organizers of the Komēta festival, and the curator of Komēta Academy. The organizer of the art collective Library of People, she now lives and works in Berlin, heading new visions – an organization that provides courses and consultations, as well as holds events promoting collective leadership, social justice, variety, and an inclusive work environment. In 2019, Liene was awarded the scholarship of the prestigious social innovator program Echoing Green.

Ode de Kort (1992) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. In the practice of Ode de Kort, as consistent collaborators, O and U are (much more than only letters), companions with whom to think, exercise, and perform. By exercising and training with these characters they both generate (typo)graphic, performative and linguistic questions. In a continuous transposition between photography, installation, video, performance and text, De Kort's practice is a way to test sense-making and unmaking, shifting the relationship between language and the formation of the self. Ode de Kort obtained her BA (2010-2013) and MFA (2013-2015) in Photography from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent. Recent shows, amongst others, include: UU TWOO solo show - De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL), TWOO UU solo show - SpazioA, Pistoia (IT), Presque Rien - Geukens & De Vil, Antwerp (BE), The Gulf Between - De Warande, Turnhout (BE) and La Lama di Procopio – Dolomiti Contemporanee, Casso (IT).

Inga Lāce (1986) is C-MAP Central and Eastern Europe Fellow at MoMA, New York. She has been curator at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art since 2012 and curator of the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019 with the artist Daiga Grantina (co-curated with Valentinas Klimašauskas). She has also been co-curator of the 7th-10th editions of the contemporary art festival SURVIVAL KIT (with Jonatan Habib Engqvist in 2017 and Angels Miralda and Solvita Krese in 2018-19, Riga). She is also co-curator of a research and exhibition project Portable Landscapes with exhibitions at Villa Vassilieff, Paris, Latvian National Art Museum, Riga (2018) and James Gallery at CUNY, New York (2019) and an upcoming publication. She has curated exhibitions It Won’t Be Long Now, Comrades! at Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2017, co-curated with Katia Krupennikova) and Performing the Fringe at Konsthall C, Stockholm (co-curated with Jussi Koitela, 2020). Lāce was curatorial fellow at de Appel, Amsterdam (2015-2016) organizing a program and editing a publication on intersection of art and ecology Instituting Ecologies.
Photo: Mārtiņš Purviņš, Delfi

Kadri Lind (1990) is a professional city lover. With an academic background in urban studies, she is a self-taught curator/producer and since 2013 a proud mother of two: Stencibility Street Art Festival and Urban Festival UIT. Lind is fascinated by how people perceive and experience their environment and believes that every inhabitant should have a personal relationship with their city, which could be triggered by temporary site-specific artworks.
Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru

Neeme Lopp (1980) is a research fellow and the head of academic publishing at the Estonian Academy of Arts, as well a lecturer of philosophy, aesthetics and contemporary cultural theory at the same university. Having graduated from University of Tartu in 2003 with a degree in literature studies, he has turned his attention to aesthetics and democracy in late- and post-Soviet culture (i.e. the transition period). In 2019 Estonian Academy of Arts Press published his translation of late Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative’. Despite being educated mainly in textual field, he has taken great interest in visual studies, especially in photography theory and is presently preparing a compendium of photography theory in Estonian language. He has a long-term love affair with Roland Barthes that shows no signs of fading.

Tom Lovelace (1981) is a London based artist, working at the intersection of photography, sculpture and performance. Central themes to his research and visual inquiry encompass the collaborative histories of photography, the role of Minimalism within contemporary visual culture, and the semantics of the everyday. His practice explores materials, processes and histories that lie within the landscape of the commonplace. His work is underpinned by interventions and interruptions of the unexceptional. Recent exhibitions include The Truth in Disguise, GESTE (Paris 2019), Present Tense, Materia Gallery (Rome 2019), Interval, Flowers Gallery (London 2019), Dazzle Site, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2017), On Board, Crispr (Bogota 2017), Paris Photo, Grand Palais (2016), Groundwork, The New Art Centre (Salisbury 2015), Sweep, Victoria and Albert Museum (London 2014), and Work Starts Here, Son Gallery (London 2012). Lovelace is a tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He studied Photography at the Arts, University Bournemouth, receiving BA First Class Honours before studying Art History and Curating at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Photo: Nina Manandhar

Mari-Liis Madisson (1988) received her PhD in Semiotics and Culture Studies from the University of Tartu, Estonia in 2016. She is a Research Fellow at the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu and a visiting Research Fellow at School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at the Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Her research combines cultural semiotics, political semiotics, communication and media studies. Her research interests lie in online culture, conspiracy theories, information influence activities and extreme right communication. She is the author of The Semiotic Construction of Identities in Hypermedia Environments: The Analysis of Online Communication of the Estonian Extreme Right (2016) and Strategic Conspiracy Narratives: A Semiotic Approach (Routledge 2020, co-author Andreas Ventsel). Photo: Nina Manandhar

Adam Mazur, PhD (1977) - art critic, art historian, and curator. His main interests are contemporary art and documentary photography. Founder and chief editor of BLOK magazine (http://blokmagazine.com/). Recently curated, together with Lukasz Gorczyca, a show on Central European photobooks at the Cracow International Centre for Culture (MCK) and published a monograph titled Mutilated World. Histories of Photography in Central Europe 1838-2017 (Universitas, Cracow 2019).

Evarts Melnalksnis was professionally trained as a musical theatre playwright at Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, winning the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship. He worked as trainee playwright and assistant director at brutWien in Vienna, Ruhrtriennale, Staatsoper Stuttgart and Staatsoper Berlin. He was awarded the Musiktheater heute programme scholarship for young musical theatre professionals. As a playwright, he worked on a production of Membra. Als ich im Sterben lag by D. Buxtehude, and the first production of Die Nacht der Seeigel at Staatsoper Hamburg, also appearing as a singer. He is the founder of KVADRIFRONS theatre company and contributed to its productions Spring, Wonderers and Beasts Are Restless set to music by Shostakovich, as well as Country of Grandmothers as a playwright. Melnalksnis curated five exhibitions at the elephant enclosure of Riga Circus. In November 2019 he worked with director Klāvs Mellis and KVADRIFRONS on Fake News!, a performative and entertaining show on the subject of disinformation.

Marta Michalak is a curator, Head of Production of Biennale Warszawa. Graduate of cultural studies and theatre studies. In the years 2011-2018, she worked as a project manager of the Dance Department of the Institute of Music and Dance. In 2008-2010 she cooperated with Grzegorz Niziołek and Agata Siwiak on the programme and organization of the three editions of the Festival of Dialogue of Four Cultures in Łódź as the manager of the programming office. In 2006-2008 she was a programme consultant and coordinator of the International Festival of Theatre Festivals ENCOUNTERS at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw, she also coordinated two editions of the Polish Theatre Showcase as part of the Warsaw Theatre Meetings organized by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute.

Marco De Mutiis, PhD (1983) is Digital Curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur, where he leads and co-curates the experimental exhibition format and research lab SITUATIONS, exploring the changing role of photography in contemporary digital and networked cultures. He also deals with issues related to digital infrastructures, online museums, and photography in its computational and algorithmic forms.

Paulius Petraitis (1985) is an artist, curator and theorist currently based in Vilnius. His work orbits around image-making within broad technological, social, and cultural contexts. Petraitis co-curated the first exhibition to take place via Snapchat: This is It/Now (2015), and also curated the screen-based photography exhibitions Sraunus (2010-2013) and Blog Reblog (2013-2014). Under the alias Paul Paper, Petraitis has published twelve titles, including Contemporary Photography and Smoke Screen. He is the editor of Too Good to be Photographed, a publication that explores the intricate relationship between photography and failure through the work of 47 artists.

Ingrīda Pičukāne (1978) is a feminist artist who focuses her art on analysis of the female perspective. She is interested in womens’ everyday life and stories ‒ personal histories that are so often omitted. Pičukāne holds two MA degrees from the Department of Animation of the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Department of Visual Communication of the Latvian Academy of Arts. Since 2007 her comic strips have been regularly published in the š! comic anthologies and shown at comic exhibitions abroad. The artist designed the Beautiful Mothers book by Jana Kukaine and illustrated a number of children’s books published by the “liels un mazs” publishing house. Ingrīda is editor and artist of the Samanta zine (first issue published in 2017) and has repeatedly contributed to the SURVIVAL KIT festival of contemporary art.

Marta Przybyło (1981) is art historian, book designer, curator and photographer. Since 2009 she has worked for the Archeology of Photography Foundation, where she coordinates the publishing department, designs books, works in the archive, curates exhibitions and educational projects. Since 2017 she has been a vice president of the Foundation.

She is the author of the Archeology of Photography Foundation books, i.a.: Tadeusz Sumiński “Industrial” (2014); “Emulsion” (2015), a book dealing with the materiality of photography; or “Lux (2016) about light in photography. She worked on the reedition of Zofia Rydet’s book, “Little man”.

She co-curated an exhibition ‘Poland’ for Export. Photography in the ‘Poland’ Monthly in 1954–1968 in Zachęta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, 2019) and co-edited a book The Beginning of the Future. Photography in the ‘Poland’ Monthly in 1954–1968 (2019) that accompanied the exhibition.

She is a co-founder and a member of a self publishing collective ‘Syreny i glonojady’.

Šelda Puķīte (1986) is a Latvian freelance art critic, curator and researcher living in Estonia. She has studied art history in Art Academy of Latvia receiving both Bachelor and Master degree and now is continuing her doctoral studies preparing dissertation about pop art influences in Latvian art. Šeldas special interest is projects which examines the contact-points between sociopolitical issues, mass culture and art executed through interdisciplinary research and whimsical presentation. For the last years she has been working on several important exhibition projects, curating educational programs and creating catalogues for art festivals, as well as participating both in local and international discussion boards, symposiums and lectures and writing reviews and essays for Baltic press and publications. Šelda has collaborated with such institutions as Latvian National Museum of Art, Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, Riga Photography Biennale, Tartu Art House and Tartu Art Museum.

Maija Rudovska’s practice is shaped by independent curation, research, art criticism and writing. She focuses on inter-mediation and stimulation of relationships and communication between different spaces, contexts and institutions in the Baltic/Nordic region, paying attention to in-betweenness, hybridity, identity and space with a recent interest in advocating for self-organized, independent practices. Rudovska holds an MA degree in art history from The Art Academy of Latvia (2009) and has completed postgraduate studies in curating from Curatorlab at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm (2009/2010). She also subsequently did three year studies at PhD programme in The Art Academy of Latvia.
Photo: Andrejs Strokins

Guntars Ruskuls (1973) has studied geography and environmental science at the University of Latvia. Currently he is employed as head of Strategic Management Section of the Riga City Council’s Urban Development Department. Guntars has headed the working out of sustainable development strategies of Riga until the year 2030 and coordinated the involvement of the public. Currently he and his colleagues are busy with the Riga development program for the next planning period, setting priorities and allocating resources. Guntars is also an active participant in defining the common interest of the Riga metropolitan area and fostering of cooperation. He uses multifaceted methods, involving the wider public, including, for instance, the authorship of the Neighborhood Platform idea and investing ideas in the community development in Riga.
Photo: Kristaps Kalns

Līga Spunde (1990) presents her works as multimedia installations, intertwining personal stories with deliberate fiction. References to different times and symbols are incorporated, building a vast yet subtle web. The precision of interpretation and new-found context become an extension of personal experience, attaining generally accepted truths. Spunde works in a variety of materials and media.

In 2014 Spunde won Ināra Tetereva Scholarship in Art. In 2016 she completed her postgraduate studies at the Department of Visual Communication of the Latvian Academy of Arts; her graduation project, The Hike, was named one of the three best projects by graduates of European art academies. She has contributed to art projects in Latvia and abroad: When Hell Is Full, the Dead Will Walk the Earth (2019, kim? centre for contemporary art, Riga); Champs-Élysées (2019, 427 Gallery, Riga); Interlude with Alvis Misjuns (elephant enclosure of Riga Circus, KVADRIFRONS, Riga); Melos (2019, Arsenāls Creative Workshop, Riga); Free French Fries (2017, Komplot Gallery, Belgium); NNN, (2017, LNMA, Riga), etc.

Guna Ševkina (1983) is an art theorist and historian, holder of an MA degree from the Department of Art History of the Latvian Academy of Arts and an MA from the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Latvia. Her professional interests include history of Latvian art and exploration and research of Latvian historical cultural heritage. She currently works as a collection manager and historian at the Latvian Museum of Photography.

Baiba Tetere (1978) is a visual arts researcher and co-founder of the ISSP association. She studied History of Photography at De Montfort University in Great Britain, and is writing her doctoral dissertation about early anthropological photography in Latvia in the late 19th century at the Greifswald University, Germany. Baiba’s research interests form an interdisciplinary section of the key areas of visual culture, history of science and material culture studies, particularly focusing on photographic surveys and the representation of farmers, and theory and management of collections and museums. Since 2006 Tetere has regularly organised educational and art projects related to photography. Tetere currently teaches a course in contemporary photography at the Riga Stradiņš University and leads research project on photographic collections in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums).