Until 6 June Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s (LV) exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’ is on display at the Art Academy of Latvia’s experimental art space ‘Pilot’.
In order to underscore the importance of the curator within contemporary cultural processes as a creative personality and mediator between artists, works of art, viewers and society, Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT in collaboration with the curatorial programme at the Art Academy of Latvia initiated a new programme in 2021: the competition ‘Emerging Curator!’, which was open to applications from emerging Latvian curators. In 2025, emerging curators from all three Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – were for the first time invited to apply for the award. Roberta Atraste is the recipient of the NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award for her exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’, which is the part of the NEXT 2025 program. The winner of the competition Emerging Curator! was chosen by an international jury: curator, artist, critic and creative director of Publics, Paul O’Neill (IE); curator and director of PhD Studies in Art History and Theory at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Julija Fomina (LT); curator, lecturer, and researcher at the Estonian Academy of Art, Triin Metsla (EE); art historian, curator and AAL vice-rector, Antra Priede (LV); and programme director at the Riga Photography Biennial, Inga Brūvere (LV).
In the exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’, Roberta Atraste turns to the bureaucratic and administrative processes involved in art. Although these practices existed even before conceptual art, it was in the 1960s that artists began functioning as “managers” and “clerks”. Those in the field of visual art were among the first to entrust the production of their work to others – not in order to completely erase or dematerialise the art object, as is sometimes believed, but rather to engage in such activities as registering, documentation, archiving, listing and indexing. In art history, these practices are sometimes related to the concept of institutional criticism. Yet it is also possible to see them in another light, stressing the often-ignored absurd, poetic, psychological and sometimes even pleasurable aspects of these procedures. The aim of the exhibition is to study and present the aesthetics of bureaucratic and administrative processes in a contemporary context. The art space ‘Pilot’ is located on the ground floor of an office building, providing an opportunity to reach out not only to the gallery’s visitors but perhaps also to its neighbours.
Participants: John Huntington (SE), Arta Kauliņa (LV), Sara Krøgholt Trier (DK), Katariin Mudist (EE), Evija Pintāne (LV)
Curator: Roberta Atraste (LV)
Scenographer: Krišjānis Beļavskis (LV)
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
Supporters and partners of the exhibition: State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Art Academy of Latvia, Experimental Art Space of the Art Academy of Latvia ‘Pilot’, Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia, Estonian Embassy in Riga, Embassy of Sweden in Riga, ‘Riga Art Week’ (RAW), printing house ‘Adverts’, ‘Rixwell Hotels’, ‘Arctic Paper’, Valmiermuiža Craft Brewery, Arterritory.com, Echo Gone Wrong, NOBA.
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
View from the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025 ‘Emerging Curator!’ award-winner Roberta Atraste’s exhibition ‘The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems’. Photo by Ingus Bajārs
