Šelda Puķīte is a Latvian curator, publisher and researcher living in Estonia. She has extensive experience working as a curator with national (Latvian and Estonian), as well as international, projects in contemporary art. ‘Emotional Landscapes’ is her first exhibition in Lithuania, which involved 15 internationally recognised artists, coming from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Spanning over two floors of the Arka Gallery in the Old Town of Vilnius, the exhibition created an atlas of emotions and topics that are permeating the current discourse in Baltic contemporary art. Besides providing an insight into carefully selected and pressing issues, Šelda did an impressive job as a curator, weaving them into a tight network, spread through the intricate gallery spaces of the former Basilian monastery. Therefore, on the last day of the exhibition, I invited Šelda to talk about the challenges and thrills of curating this exhibition, to contemplate changes in the Baltic contemporary art scene, and to take a look at her future projects.
Miglė Markulytė: The title of the exhibition ‘Emotional Landscapes’ is inspired by Björk’s song ‘Jóga’, in which she sings about a state of emergency. What are the emotional landscapes in this exhibition, and why did you decide to call it that?
Šelda Puķīte: If we talk about the title as such, then the inspiration, as you already pointed out, came directly from Björk’s song. I am a huge fan of her music. But in general, many titles for the shows that I make come from pop culture or other seemingly random sources. I like that kind of dynamic, or the clash between the source of inspiration and the project itself, which most of the time addresses very serious topics. Björk’s song is not the biggest clash, I must say. For example, the inspiration for titles in the past has come from eBay T-shirts. In 2018, I did a show for the Riga Photography Biennale 2018, and it was called ‘Today I’m a Mermaid. Tomorrow I’ll Be a Unicorn’, which was dedicated to magical identities. In this case, I liked how Björk works with her lyrics, where she seemingly talks a lot about nature, but it’s actually a metaphor for how she feels. This is a straightforward explanation of a title that is hopefully reflected in the exhibition. Although many of the works were in some way referring to landscape, the artists were talking about their concerns, their worries and what intrigues them, or very personal intimate matters.
MM: What was the incentive to make this exhibition? How did it start?
The idea for this project, funnily enough, came when I was curating the stand for the Liste Art Fair in Basel. Together with the Kogo Gallery, we decided to showcase works by Laura Põld and Kristi Kongi, and each of them had projects that define perfectly what an emotional landscape is. Through the metaphor of landscape, they talked about something that concerned them in their state of life, as well as the world at large. In Kristi Kongi’s case, she reflects in her series of paintings on the effect of the pandemic . They are like diaries depicting the sky through the different periods of the year during the desperate times of isolation, fear and death. Laura is more interested in the history of the Earth, craftsmanship and environmental issues, which she then reflects on in her sculptures and textile works. On that stand in Basel, putting together the sky and the earth, we were able to create one emotional landscape. After doing it, I got the idea that it would be interesting to expand the topic into a bigger group show, and when I got an invitation to do a show at Arka, I already knew what I wanted to do.
Laura Pold & Lou Sheppard. Photo: Laurynas Skeisgiela
MM: Moving through the exhibition, we notice that each room is like a different zone, where certain topics are grouped. To name a few, there is a futuristic space, a socio-political corridor, a cluster of ecological issues, and a borderline, filled with subtle tension and echoes of past and present wars … Can you comment on your curatorial strategy, where you started, and how you got to this point where all the works formed an apparent network?
ŠP: At the beginning, I was inspired by the space itself. The Arka Gallery is a very interesting but tricky exhibition space: it resembles a labyrinth with unconventional spaces. Because of the peculiarity of the space and its history (it was built at the end of the 16th century), I was imagining some kind of atlas of the Middle Ages, where each of the spaces would be an island inhabiting this wonderland. I’m fascinated by maps from the Middle Ages, because not only are factual objects marked, but also mystical creatures, like strange animals, monsters, and people with several heads … In planning the exhibition, I did not go as far as I imagined. I didn’t turn it into a map, but there is still a sense of islands that are more fantastic and others that are more realistic. I did not intend to group the artworks according to particular topics, it just happened spontaneously. I like it when works are exhibited in such a way that they start merging together. It’s most prominent when artists go through similar emotions or struggles, and naturally, when put together, their works form a cohesive dialogue. For example, works by Maija Kurševa, Diāna Tamane and Krišs Salmanis are exhibited in one space in such a way that they could be perceived as one artist’s extensive, complex work.
If I think about it, only at the opening of the exhibition did I get the idea that these rooms could have subtitles. So, these spaces were formed very intuitively.
(takes a moment to ponder)
I call it intuition, but actually, when you get to curate exhibitions often enough, then this intuitive work actually comes from knowledge gained in previous experiences. But I think this is the most poetic exhibition I’ve done. So I wanted to choose the artworks and to build the space based on what I’m interested in myself, what speaks to me, letting the exhibition be inspired by my emotions and subjectivity.
MM: The poetic aspect is indeed prevalent in the exhibition, but I have also noticed some very deliberate decisions that created integrity, such as Rūta Spelskytė’s pieces of confetti that are placed in each space forming a dialogue with other works according to the theme of the room, and finally joining all the topics, where single pieces drown in the abundance of the collection. Or Alexei’s works, which create an impression of extending the rooms to another space.
ŠP: I like to mix things up, and I like to break up works by one artist throughout the rooms, so that a viewer can revisit them going through the space. I prefer this much more than exhibitions where artworks are separated according to the author. But here I tried not to overdo it, because I did not want to turn the exhibition into a ‘student breakfast’. But I felt that Alexei’s and Rūta’s works could be a thread connecting the whole show. And these were the last choices made, which were also the most thought-through. Gordin’s work is dedicated to the Moscow House in Vilnius, and in his video series he travels through that troublesome building. It made sense to scatter the videos through the Arka Gallery, so I could simultaneously play with the spaces in the video and the gallery. In Rūta’s case, I wanted to exhibit confetti as she found it: randomly and accidentally. But then, after talking to Rūta, we got the idea to curate them according to the themes presented by different artists, and so we dug out fantastic confetti that related well to the artworks. My favourite one was the embassy work in the borderline exhibition space with Maija Kurševa, Diāna Tamane, Alexei Gordin and Krišs Salmanis, which is all about geopolitical problems in the European Union. And of course, Americans play a big role as support for Europe, so they just had to be in the room, at least as a hint. So it was nice that Rūta had a piece of confetti that was found near the US Embassy.
Maija Kurševa, Diāna Tamane and Krišs Salmanis. Photo: Laurynas Skeisgiela
MM: I noticed that most of the works in the exhibition were made quite recently (over the last few years). It is also mentioned in the description that the participants are internationally known and established artists from the Baltic countries. Why haven’t you involved the younger generation, or archival material?
ŠP: For the archives, to be honest, I just did not have enough time to work with them in any meaningful way. I think most Baltic curators can tell you that only on very rare occasions do they have the privilege of just being the curator of exhibitions. In some ways, you are usually also a producer, fundraiser, coordinator, architect, and so on. Not to mention that most of us have a day job. That actually wastes a lot of time that should be devoted to just developing the exhibition, doing research, and working with artists. So it’s a serious undertaking, and I’m already working on another big exhibition project and several smaller ones. Also, I am devoting my research muscles as far as possible to Baltic women’s history. I also felt that the Arka Gallery wanted it to be a presentation of contemporary Baltic artists, so it didn’t feel right to include archives.
And talking about artists of the younger generation, there are so many of them that I could have included, but for this kind of show it was important for me to have already-existing personal relations, if not with the artists, then with their artworks. But like many curators, I feel that I am getting a bit stuck in my own generation, or one generation before me, because they are who I know best, and we have shared the same space for the longest time together. So what I’m working on now is to actually get better acquainted and maybe start working more with younger-generation artists who are still in their twenties. But for this exhibition, I felt it would be artificial to force it, so stay tuned!
MM: Can you imagine another way this Baltic emotional landscape could be formed? If you had no limits and as much time as you need, what themes would you see existing on the map of the exhibition? Would there be different aspects, or maybe there was something very specific that was deliberately left out that you wanted to include?
ŠP: I will definitely mention two projects that were originally planned and are not here, and I still think it would be great if they had been here. Each of them has different reasons why they did not end up in the show. First, I invited Inga Meldere, a wonderful Latvian artist living in Finland. She was supposed to make a site-specific wall piece. She is a painter, but her first education is as a conservator, and she uses this skill in her art pieces very cleverly. She creates fake sondages where she recovers layers of paint in a wall, as well as some decoration or old paintings that of course have never really been there. She just does it in such a way that it really looks as if they had been rediscovered. I wanted her work to appear in the context of the Arka Gallery. Just imagine, we open up a layer of a wall, and it turns out that there is some Modernist piece under it, or some fresco from the Middle Ages. And she was planning to use pigment from plants that can be found in Lithuania to make the paint. But while we were planning things, she was invited to go on a residency in the USA, and so we had to cancel it, as it can’t be done without her.
Another project I wanted to include was Wasteland (The Phosphorite War) by Laura Põld. It is a set of sculptures mimicking phosphorite mining sites with water and electrical mist. But there were too many technical difficulties with transport and exhibiting.
If I had all the money in the world, I would maybe play a lot more with space, and hire a set designer or an architect. It would have been fun to change the space. Now, because I could not do it, I decided to embrace the space, to show all the bumps, radiators and leaks on the walls. All these imperfections became part of this emotional landscape. So maybe it turned out even better.
Talking about topics in the exhibition, I would like to delve more into the topics of modern science and artificial intelligence. But I’m still trying to understand my relationship with that, so maybe that’s the reason why it’s not in the exhibition. Also, feminist topics are very close to me, and there are strong artists in the Baltic countries who are working seriously with gender-related questions. But somehow this time they did not enter the show, and that is something I must admit I regret a bit.
MM: You have been curating contemporary art in Latvia and Estonia for almost fourteen years now. Also, you are not only a curator, but also an art historian and critic as well, so I have a slightly broader question for you. How can you describe the changes in the Baltic contemporary art scene during the last few decades? Have you noticed new trends or different topics that are becoming more important to artists in the region?
ŠP: I can only talk about the time after 2004, because that was when I finished school. I remember this ‘new Renaissance of painting’ in Latvia. In the 2000s, in the second half of the first decade, painting was making a strong comeback. There were a lot of interesting young painters’ exhibitions. Some of them are continuing today, expanding into more conceptual forms, using installation and performative elements. They are often still working with paint and brushes, but the work itself seems to be more than just something associated with one medium. So the painting tradition in Latvia is still very strong, but it has its updates. Nowadays, it seems that materiality is again very relevant. Things seem to flow freely from one shape to the next, they pour in and out of each other. So there is a lot of liquidity, and I think it comes with new philosophies, like hydro-feminism and liquid Modernism. I could write a whole essay answering this question.
Queer and feminist art, which used to be pretty marginal, are now much more popular and accepted on the local cultural scene. It used to be cursed by society’s false assumptions as an unfortunate Soviet legacy about equality between genders. With newer generations, there are more and more artists who are not just interested in raising questions, but also who say proudly ‘I’m a feminist artist.’ A decade ago, at least in Latvia, there were only a few artists who were openly stating that they were feminists, because it was still so stigmatised and misunderstood. Also, it has broadened to a wider branch of queer art: there is a Baltic drag king movement, as well as more artists who are implementing queer topics in their art. Also, a new sensitivity seems to be back. Artists, especially women, don’t feel they need to masculinise themselves to be taken seriously. Of course, ecological questions are very prominent. From a more historical perspective, the Baltic countries are experiencing a beautiful women’s history movement. The highlight, of course, is the revival and international recognition of the deceased Estonian sculptor Anu Põder, but there is so much more happening at the moment.
Changes in aesthetics are of course constantly happening. There will be different trends, as it was with post-Internet or new Modernity, or returning to craftsmanship, which is rapidly regaining its popularity. Yet, at the same time, there is 3D printing and AI art. I feel a lot of artists are experimenting with digital art and artificial intelligence. There was this crazed moment with NFTs, but I’m not sure how visible it was in the Baltic countries. And of course, there are more socio-critical aspects present in art now, but also a lightness and playfulness connected with it. But this is slowly changing. I see more and more socio-political or geopolitical questions being addressed through contemporary art. It is the same in this exhibition; there is poetry, but it’s not just dreamers dreaming about a beautiful life or the world they would like to live in. They are dreaming in a state of emergency, embracing the storm in them, without obligatorily talking straightforwardly about it. So again, we are coming back to Björk: she does the same. Most of the time it seems she is talking about painful personal experiences, but she does it in a poetic, metaphorical way, using nature as her main language.
MM: I have heard that you are already working on another exhibition in Lithuania, together with Agnė Narušytė and Indrek Grigor. Can you tell us more about that project?
ŠP: Yes, we are preparing the exhibition ‘Silver Girls. Retouched History of Baltic Photography’ which will take place in 2025 in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. In the summer of 2020, at Tartu Art Museum, together with Indrek Grigor, I prepared an exhibition entitled ‘Silver Girls. Retouched History of Photography’. The exhibition introduced a selection of works by ten early women photographers from Estonia and Latvia, and placed them in the company of three contemporary European artists whose works contemplate the lost and the neglected in our visual history. The new iteration of the project in Vilnius is expanding the first exhibition by including early Lithuanian photographers, and by increasing the number of artists and photographs featured. The exhibition will introduce seven early women photographers from each country working from the nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, who this time are in dialogue with three contemporary artists from the Baltic (Marge Monko, Diāna Tamane and Goda Palekaitė), whose art addresses in different ways the topics of the project and the historical material exhibited. Also, we will prepare a new book on the topic, and show all the material we have gathered. I have been interested in women’s history for some years now, and I am happy that through this project I can flex my art researcher muscles and contribute to writing new chapters in Baltic art history. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, and yet very exciting, to make a show of early women photographers from the Baltic countries for the first time on this scale.
Photo reportage from the exhibition ‘Emotional Landscapes’ at Arka gallery
