EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME PARTICIPANTS

Irēna Bužinska (1955) has received an MA from the Art Academy of Latvia. Since 1977, she has been working at the Latvian National Museum of Art, currently as exhibition curator. She has published more than 300 articles on Latvian art history and contemporary art exhibitions. Since 1989, she has focused on the research of Latvian art history, especially on the legacy of Voldemārs Matvejs, and the activities of artists-photographers, which resulted in the exhibition Hybrid Overflights. The Artist as Photographer. Mid 19th century - 2010, LNMM, Arsenāls Exhibition Hall (2011) and an exhibition of 19th century art photo reproductions at the Art Museum Riga Bourse (2019). Curator of several photography exhibitions by Voldemārs Matvejs, Inta Ruka, Andrejs Grants, Egons Spuris, Aivis Šmulders, Valdis Celms, Atis Ieviņš. Currently, her focus is on the use of photomontage in the 1920s-30s press in Latvia, as well as amateur photo postcards. The book Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism: A Charter for the Avant-Garde (in collaboration with Z. S. Strother and Jeremy Howard) has been published by Ashgate (USA, 2015, 2nd edition 2019).

Vika Eksta (1987) is an artist and educator who uses photography, moving image, performance and audiovisual archives in her work. In her long-term projects, Vika combines the documentary and fictional. She has studied photography at Andrejs Grants' studio and EFTI photography school in Madrid, and obtained a master's degree in visual communication at the Art Academy of Latvia. Vika is the winner of the ADC Young Guns, FK Portfolio and Riga Photography Biennial awards for young Baltic photographers, and has been nominated for the Purvītis Prize. Since 2014, she has participated in exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, including at the ISSP Gallery, Kaunas Photography Gallery, Gallery Alma, the Latvian National Museum of Art, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre.

Gabrielė Gervickaitė (Gabo) is a founding member of Luna6 as well as a member of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. In addition to her own artistic practice, Gervickaitė works as a curator and socially-engaged arts educator. Gervickaitė has experience in working with people with disabilities and young people. In her creative work, she studies the relations between bodies and the medical industry. She creates artworks using her body as archival material and studies the impact of the construction of normalcy; particularly in contemporary media, social and political situations.

Noah Brehmer is a political theorist, cultural organiser and founding member of Luna6. Before arriving in Lithuania some years ago he lived in NYC. Brehmer has published articles and essays in Art and Education Journal, Blind Field Journal, Left East, Mute Magazine, Metropolis M and OpenDemocracy. Brehmer is a member of the editor and proofreader cooperative Endash. Recent activity includes editing the Ultimate Leisure Workers’ Club Reader (2021) and co-organising the Paths to Autonomy night school. Brehmer is currently involved in organising a collective research effort on the urban commons in post-Socialist Eastern Europe.

Jonas Lund (1984, Sweden) creates paintings, sculpture, photography, websites and performances that critically reflect on contemporary networked systems and power structures of control. His artistic practice involves creating systems and setting up parameters that often require engagement from the viewer. This results in performative artworks where tasks are executed according to algorithms or a set of rules. Through his works, Lund investigates the latest issues generated by the increasing digitalisation of contemporary society like authorship, participation and distribution of agency. At the same time, he questions the mechanisms of the art world; he challenges the production process, authoritative power and art market practices.

Lund earned an MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery (2019), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2016), Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2016, 2015, 2014), Växjö Konsthall Sweden (2016), Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam (2013), New Museum, New York (2012), and has had work included in numerous group exhibitions including at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Vienna Biennale 2019, Witte De With, Rotterdam, Kindl – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Paola Paleari (1984) is an Italian independent writer, editor and curator based in Copenhagen. Between 2013 and 2018 she covered the position of deputy editor at YET magazine and since 2018 she has directed the exhibition platform JIR SANDEL. She writes extensively about contemporary art for publications such as Flash Art, Elephant, Mousse magazine and Vogue. Her main area of interest is photographic language and its relations with contemporary visual culture and art practices. She is also interested in the intersection between critical and creative writing and often intertwines art criticism with other forms of storytelling.
Photo: Urška Boljkovac, MGLC Archive

Mike Pepi (1986, US) writes about art, culture, and technology. His work has appeared in frieze, e-flux, Flash Art, Art in America, DIS Magazine, Artforum, The Art Newspaper, Spike Art, The Brooklyn Rail, Rhizome, and The New Criterion. He also organized Cloud-Based Institutional Critique (CBIC), a reading group focused on emerging digital technologies and their relationship to cultural institutions. In 2015 he was co-guest editor of the Data Issue of DIS Magazine with Marvin Jordan. In 2018, he guest-edited a special issue of SFMoMA's Open Space entitled Heavy Machinery. He is based in New York.

Auguste Petre (1993) is an independent curator and researcher of art processes. She graduated from the Latvian Academy of Culture and obtained a master's degree from the Arts Academy of Latvia, in the field of art history and curatorial studies. Petre's interests mainly lie in the relationship between politics and art, interdisciplinary manifestations in visual art, as well as the creative expression of Latvian artists born in the 1990s.

Since 2017, Petre has been working as an art journalist, creating articles for Latvian and foreign media, and working as Baltic editor for Arterritory.com. She also has experience as a lecturer on art processes, and in projects by the Mākslai vajag telpu (Art Needs Space) foundation and the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. Since 2020, Auguste Petre has been programme director of the Riga Smallest Art Gallery and co-curator of the Riga Smallest Auction cycle.
Photo: Marta Mielava

Tīna Pētersone (1994) holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Prior to that, she graduated with a BA in Communication Science from the University of Latvia, as well as spending a semester at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, studying Communication and Cultural Management. Last year, she took part in the What Could Should Curating Do? curators' summer school In Belgrade, Serbia. She won the first Riga Photography Biennial - NEXT 2021 and Art Academy of Latvia "Young Curator!" Award, and curated the traveling exhibition of the Jeune Création Europeenne (JCE) Young Artist Biennale in Cēsis, Latvia. Together with the artist Krišjānis Elviks, she formed the association temporary.lv, which in the summer of 2020 settled into an art laboratory on the shores of the Baltic Sea. She curated Linda Vilka's solo exhibition BREAK-me-DOWN-tomorrow (2020) in Plieņciems, Latvia, and worked on the group exhibitions Making Sense (2020) and It Got Brighter, Then Dimmer, Right Next to the Wound (2019) in London, UK.

Siim Preiman (1992) is a contemporary art agent and a curator at Tallinn Art Hall who also operates the mobile art platform galerii galerii. His curatorial projects explore the possible role that art can play in resisting global powers, focusing on the ethics of making art and on micro-narratives circulating in society. He studied Art History at the Estonian Academy of Art. Preiman’s latest curatorial projects include galerii galerii presents: a concise anthology of mobile art platforms at 1st March Gallery, Tallinn (2021), Memory Palace by Maria Valdma at Tallinn City Gallery (2021) and Endless Story by Mihkel Ilus and Paul Kuimet at Tallinn Art Hall (2020).
Photo: Keiu Maasik

Antra Priede (1985) is an art historian and curator. Has received a BA and MA from the Art History and Theory Department of the Art Academy of Latvia (AAL). Since her studies, AAL has also been her workplace - as prorector for study work, dean of the master's programme (since 2018 also the Curatorial Studies programme of the Art History and Theory Department). As the dean of the master's programme, she devotes a lot of time and energy to attracting international industry professionals to AAL to provide students in the master's programme with wide-ranging and international experience, introducing the contemporary qualities of the field and helping to build the foundations of a strong personal practice.

Antra has gained valuable professional experience working at the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art as a project manager and curator. She has created and managed the Latvian art scene section on the Baltic contemporary art online daily Echo Gone Wrong. Her research activities are related to reviewing the history of exile art, emphasizing key contemporary issues, including the role of the curator in the local and international art ecosystem, the role of women in the art environment and other sometimes uncomfortable questions.

Airi Triisberg (1982) is an independent curator, writer and educator based in Tallinn. Her practice is often located at the intersection of political education, self-organisation and knowledge production. One of her ongoing research interests is focused on historical and contemporary moments when the experiences of living with illness or disability have been politicized in order to express social critique. In 2015 she curated Get Well Soon!, an exhibition presenting artistic re-articulations of social imaginaries rooted in the radical movements of the 1970s. Another strand in her practice has been focused on precarious labour and art workers’ organising. In 2015 she co-published the book Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice together with Minna Henriksson and Erik Krikortz. Currently she is researching the intersections of movement politics and cultural practices in Eastern Europe.

Kaspars Vanags (1970) is an art curator and theorist. In the mid-1990s, in collaboration with like-minded cultural practitioners, Vanags founded the creative platform Open in Riga, which organised major cross-disciplinary events, fostering collaboration between practitioners in visual arts, electronic music, new media art and literature. As a curator, he has devised projects casting art in the role of a critical social tool, tackling or creating alternatives to the agenda of consumerism: Slideplays (1998), Subversion in the City (2000) and T-Shroom (2002). He subsequently turned his attention to studying art history and obtained an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. In 2015, he was the Curator of the Latvian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale, which showcased Armpit, a work by artists Katrīna Neiburga and Andris Eglītis. Among his latest exhibitions and art projects are Slash: In Between the Normative and Fantasy (2016) at kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2015), You’ve Got 1243 Unread Messages. The Last Generation Before the Internet. Their Lives at the Latvian National Museum of Art (2018), microRIBOCA – interseasonal public programme of Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2019) and Sekretiki: Digging in the Soviet Underground (2020) at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow). Since 2020 he is director of the Pauls Stradins Museum of History of Medicine.