Danish artist Gitte Villesen’s solo exhibition "It runs about like ants"

2014 10 14 — 2014 11 13 at Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in Events in Latvia

Gite_Vilesen_publicitates_foto

Danish artist Gitte Villesen’s solo exhibition, It runs about like ants, will open at 6pm on Tuesday, 14th October at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art’s Office Gallery.  One of the three works, in which Gitte Villesen portrays Latvian women who are interested in healing, has been exhibited at the exhibition. It reveals the artist’s interest in traditional belief systems of different cultures, about how people use their beliefs in everyday life and how they help them to survive.

The idea for the video installation, It runs about like ants, arose as part of the SURVIVAL KIT Festival – prior to this, she’d filmed the story of a Gambian woman and her “white magic” stories, while in 2011, the artist began filming and interviewing Latvian women who hold non-traditional knowledge about various ways of healing. The first of her works is dedicated to Skaidrīte in Kurzeme, who was introduced to Gitte, as an admirable expert in herbs and medicines, by Signe Pucena, the Director of SERDE Residence Centre at Aizpute. Skaidrīte acquired this type of knowledge from books and through her personal experience – working at one time as a nurse at a hospital and using her knowledge to prepare herbal teas for her patients.

The core of the film is formed by the conversations with Skaidrīte, which take place in her garden and living room. From the various pieces of advice and stories about healing, the story moves to Skaidrīte’s family history, which has been marked by political events in Latvia during the 20th century.

Gitte Villesen (1965) lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin. The videos and installations created by the artist can be perceived as portraits in the wider sense: they research ways in which the individual or a social group give form to their lives, based on opportunities provided by the cultural environment. However, people don’t appear as heroes, or victims of circumstances, in her works. Instead, Villesen highlights how objects and personalities are created through everyday gestures, habits and rituals, in intensive relationships between what is normal and what is deviant. She avoids social generalizations, positioning her own practice of documentation as an exchange and a coming together – an unusual form of social interaction. Gitte’s works have been exhibited in Latvia previously at the Archaeology of Reality Exhibition (2006) and at the SURVIVAL KIT 2 Festival (2010).

The work was produced by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art as part of the SURVIVAL KIT Festival.

Exhibition Coordinator – Agnese Lūse

Gitte Villesen came up with the idea for the film, and was also the operator and montage director. Matilda Mester (operator), Felia Gram-Hansen (sound recordings) and Agnese Lūse also took part in the making of this film.

The exhibition can be viewed from 15th October until 13th November.

The LCCA Office Gallery is open every working day from 12 midday until 6pm; entry to the exhibition is free. Address: Alberta Street 13 (7the floor), Rīga, LV-1010.