Photo reportage from the exhibition 'To Pay an Arm and a Leg' by Elīna Vītola at Kogo Gallery

Kogo Gallery in Tartu currently shows a solo exhibition To Pay an Arm and a Leg by Latvian painter, installation and performance artist Elīna Vītola. The show is curated by art scholar and curator Ieva Astahovska. By examining the dark aspects of her family history, the artist connects reflections on art and life, past and present, personal and collective, known and unspoken. The exhibition will remain on view until 8 February.

The exhibition asks: What if the past and its memories are hiding or silenced, contradictory, unknowable, and in the end, difficult and dark? How to think and talk about it when, despite the data and facts discovered, there is no direct evidence or material? How can an art exhibition help to reopen and talk about this past?

The artist had a desire to know more about her great-uncle whom she never met because he disappeared during the Second World War. He too was a painter. Through archival and other research, and hearing stories from unexpectedly found relatives in different parts of the world, the artist uncovered the twists and turns of her great-uncle’s life but also the contradictions and silences about him in the family memories. These sources disclosed not only the biography of her lost relative but also the unpleasant and difficult memories of the Second World War and post-war era and the silences that still accompany them in society at large.The solo exhibition To Pay an Arm and a Leg by Elīna Vītola is open from 6 December 2024 until 8 February 2025 in Tartu, Estonia at Kogo Gallery in Aparaaditehas (Kastani 42). The gallery is open for visits Wed–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16.

The exhibition is funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia and the City of Tartu.

Special thanks to Aleksandrs Bieziņš primary school in Raiskums, Kaspars Kalniņš and Emma Buckley.Elīna Vītola (b. 1986) is an artist based in Riga. Her conceptual and visually vibrant work varies from paintings to complex communal installations involving several other artists and creative practitioners. Classically trained as a painter at the Art Academy of Latvia (BA and MA), Vītola has taken up this medium as a companion in her artistic journey to disentangle some issues that are connected with her identity as an artist and the art world in general and to build new platforms for other artists. She has worked both as an artist and as a curator in organisations such as the Monumental Cafe and Low Gallery in Riga. Vītola has participated in exhibitions at the Latvian National Museum of Art, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, Tallinn Art Hall, Kadriorg Art Museum in Tallinn, the University of Tartu Art Museum, Kogo Gallery in Tartu and P/////AKT in Amsterdam. Kogo Gallery presented her solo installation Common Issues in Painting and Everyday Life at Liste Art Fair Basel 2024. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Purvītis Prize, in 2018, she received the Nordic & Baltic Young Artist Award. Her works are in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art and the European Patent Office Collection.

Ieva Astahovska (b. 1979) is an art scholar and curator. She works at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, where she leads research projects related to art and culture in socialist and post-socialist periods and entanglements between postsocialist and postcolonial perspectives in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, as well as non-formal education projects, focusing on the current processes in contemporary art. Ieva has edited several research-based publications, including the anthology Valdis Āboliņš. The avant-garde, mailart, the New Left and cultural relations during the Cold War (2019), Workshop of Restoration of Unfelt Feelings. Juris Boiko and Hardijs Lediņš (2016), Revisiting Footnotes. Footprints of the Recent Past in the Post-Socialist Region (2015). Her recently curated exhibitions include Decolonial Ecologies. Understanding the Postcolonial after Socialism in Riga (2022) and Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds (2022–2024) co-curated with Margaret Tali, shown in Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn.

Kogo Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Tartu, Estonia, founded in 2018. The gallery focuses on the younger generation of artists, currently representing seven female artists from the Baltic countries. Kogo Gallery’s international presence includes participation in noted art fairs, such as Liste Art Fair Basel, Esther New York, viennacontemporary, Art Brussels and others, the exchange of exhibitions with galleries abroad and other collaborations. Kogo also works closely with local communities by organising a diverse public programme alongside exhibitions, functioning as an internship base, initiating and co-organising extensive art events series in the gallery’s hometown and participating in developing the art scene in Estonia.