Until 30 May Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 award ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography!’ winner Ruudu Ulas’ (EE) solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’ is on display at the ISSP Gallery. Curator: Inga Brūvere (LV).
This year the Riga Photography Biennial ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography!’ Award was presented for the sixth time. The goal of the award is to discover and recognise the creative efforts of emerging artists who demonstrate the power of the image in their works, offering an original point of view and conceptual depth suited to the times. It highlights emerging Baltic artists whose works are already full of these qualities. Since 2019, the award has been presented as part of the Biennial’s programme NEXT, in cooperation with the ISSP Gallery.
In 2025, the international jury – the art critic, historian and curator Adam Mazur (PL); the artistic director of Tallinn Photomonth, Kulla Laas (EE); artist and curator Paulius Petraitis (LT); art historian and critic Santa Hirša (LV); and artist and curator at the ISSP Gallery, Iveta Gabaliņa (LV) – presented the main award to Ruudu Ulas for her series ‘Difficult Objects’. Commenting on their decision, the jury member Kulla Laas (EE) said: “Ruudu Ulas is very skilful at creating powerful photographic imagery with minimal elements and pure forms of display. The depicted scenes are frozen and isolated moments in time that have a quiet oddness to them and always leave something unseen. Her work has a strong cinematic quality, and each separate image raises expectancy for the viewer. This is reached successfully with the combination of staged and documentary photography, and sizes that put small material objects and large architectural structures at the same scale in the narrative. The sense of the images is filled with an air of the unknown, anxiety and fear, thus effectively commenting on the state of contemporary life.”
Ruudu Ulas holds a BA from Glasgow School of Art and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London. In 2023, Ruudu also won the London Photographers’ Gallery Young Talent Award. ‘Difficult Objects’ explores tangible and psychological intersections through photography. Each work navigates the space between the familiar and the unknown, challenging us to reflect on our personal relationships with ubiquitous public and private structures. This exhibition seeks to depict the ways in which urban spaces and domestic spheres collide and merge, leaving strangely shaped gaps in which the imagination attempts to interpret connections.
The Riga Photography Biennial (RPB) is an international contemporary art event, focusing on the analysis of visual culture and artistic representation. The term ‘photography’ in the title of the biennial is used as an all-embracing concept encompassing a mixed range of artistic image-making practices that have continued to transform the lexicon of contemporary art in the 21st century. The Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT offers visibility and provides a platform for promising young artists and helps to announce themselves to a wider audience and context. Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 program from 24 April to 6 July, the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 offers a wide-ranging program of exhibitions and education events, giving the floor to emerging artists and curators from the Baltic and other countries who have addressed aspects of the theme ‘invisible but present’. For more information: www.rpbiennial.com
ISSP has been active in the field of contemporary photography for more than 18 years, developing an active photography environment in Latvia, educating the young generation of Latvian photographers and promoting international exchange.
Supporters and partners of the exhibition: State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, ISSP Gallery, ‘VV Foundation’, ‘NoRoutine Books’, Estonian Embassy in Riga, ‘Riga Art Week’ (RAW), printing house ‘Adverts’, ‘Rixwell Hotels’, ‘Arctic Paper’, Valmiermuiža Craft Brewery, Arterritory.com, Echo Gone Wrong, NOBA
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025: view from the Ruudu Ulas’s solo exhibition ‘Difficult Objects’. Photo by Dasha Trofimova
