Photo: Margarita Ogoļceva
Uncomfortable Herstories: The cases of Hella Wuolijoki and Asja Lācis.
Mon, March 25, 17.30–19.30, Estonian Academy of Arts
Presenters: Jaana Kokko, Andris Brinkmanis; respondents: Anu Allas, Airi Triisberg
The event takes place in collaboration between MA Contemporary Art (MACA) and the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, and in the framework of “Communicating Difficult Pasts” (2019–2024).
Moderators: Margaret Tali and Ieva Astahovska
The political past, like the present, is often uncomfortable. In this public seminar we revisit the lives and artistic work of two politically active women in order to rethink how we could open the discomfort their lives introduce and unpack it by focusing on two herstories, those of Hella Wuolijoki (1886–1954) and Asja Lācis (1891–1979). Our aim is to think through how we could turn this discomfort into a starting point. We inquire whether a comparative perspective on these artists’ lives and works could help shift the view of their left-wing ideas and related engagements, asking how can we reengage with their uncomfortable and marginalized intellectual and creative legacies, allowing for a richer and more complex view of the circumstances and transnational connections. How can we understand and contextualize the discomfort and threats they faced during their careers? Could understanding the connections between their lives and art offer more nuanced and connected ways of grasping, on the one hand, the long and porous 20th century, and on the other, new ways of understanding artistic practice today?
Hella Wuolijoki (born Ella Murrik) was an active figure in Finnish cultural, economic, and political life. Born in Helme in Estonia into an upper-class family in 1886, she moved to Finland in 1905 to study at the University of Helsinki, which had enabled university education for women from 1901. Internationally, Wuolijoki’s most well-known literary work is the play Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti, which she co-authored with Berthold Brecht in 1940. Her autobiographical trilogy, which includes Schoolgirl in Tartu and Student Years in Helsinki, both of which were written at Katajanokka prison in 1945, where she was held as a traitor. In these texts, Wuolijoki describes violent moments in her parents’ garden in Valga after the 1905 revolution; witnessing the purge that followed sparked her interest in class equality and historical materialism. As an artist Jaana Kokko is particularly interested in this change and the related intense personal experiences.
Asja Lācis (Anna Lāce) was a Latvian theater director, actress, pedagogue, theorist, tireless seeker, and experimenter who went on to become an intermediary between the German, Latvian, and Russian avant-garde cultures. The topography of her life connects all the focal points of early 20th-century Europe. With her experience, vivid personality, and broad knowledge, she collaborated with and inspired Brecht and Walter Benjamin, among many others. Almost forgotten and sometimes deliberately omitted, the work of Lācis became better known in the west in the 1960s. She is recognized internationally for her innovative work with homeless children as well as for her approach to and methods for working with children’s film and theater, proletarian theater, and amateur actors. She has published German Revolutionary Theater (1935) and Children & Cinema (1928, in collaboration). Lācis’ archival materials, curated by Andris Brinkmanis, were exhibited in Documenta 14 (2017) in Kassel, Germany.
Jaana Kokko is an artist, filmmaker, and teacher based in Helsinki, whose background is in arts and economics. She is interested in the languages and places/spaces of individuals in which the singularity of experience opens onto the collective and its historicity in ways that allow us to reflect on the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of not only self-representation but also life itself as something shared. Currently, she is working on two films, both located on the peripheries, where she is trying to shift the gaze to the outskirts of the seen and heard.
Andris Brinkmanis is an art critic and curator, born in Riga and based in Brunate and Milan. He is a Senior Lecturer and the Course Leader of the BA in Painting and Visual Arts at NABA in Milan and Visiting Professor for the Art Academy of Latvia Curatorial Course. In 2021, he curated and edited the book Asja Lācis. L’agitatrice rossa. Teatro, femminismo, arte e rivoluzione (Meltemi, 2021).
Discussion reflecting on the legacy of the colonial past in the Baltics. February 23, 2021
Curing Histories – online discussion
28 November 2020
The idea of ‘curing’ is usually connected to people and living beings, but could histories also be ‘cured’? What could it mean to cure history? This idea has been inspired by the works of artists included in “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” that bring to the fore forgotten and ignored aspects of history and establish new connections between them. Could we see such artistic practices as a way of curing histories? During this opening discussion we talked about it with artists included in the exhibition Andrii Dostliev, Paulina Pukytė, Quinsy Gario, Jörgen Gario, Ülo Pikkov, Vika Eksta and Zuzanna Hertzberg to learn more about their work and approaches. The discussion was moderated by Margaret Tali and Ieva Astahovska.
Performance by Quinsy Gario and Jörgen Gario “How to See the Spots of Der Leopard”
3 August 2020, Kuldīga
Video documentation of the performance can be viewed in the series Monument, a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Het Nieuwe Instituut.
The performance took place during the LCCA Summer School and it reflected on Latvia’s connection to European colonialism. The brothers Quinsy and Jörgen Gario are from the island of Sint Maarten, where in July 1645 Duke Jacob Kettler’s ship The Hope was spotted. It was transporting ivory and pepper from present-day Liberia to the Caribbean and from there it took tropical timber to Europe. In 1653 Duke Jacob built the ship Der Leopard, a slave ship, and forcibly transported abducted Africans to be sold and enslaved on the French island Martinique. The Baltic German-dominated Duchy of Courland is often recalled as a positive period in Latvian history, emphasising ethnic Latvian.
12 November 2019, the Art Academy of Latvia (New Building)
How do we talk about natural disasters, colonial exploitation, resistance and survival? Through the prism of his families experiences and stories Quinsy Gario is busy with a storytelling and performance lecture trilogy that looks at resource extraction within the Dutch Caribbean. In the lecture Gario sketched an overview of the Dutch Caribbean political situation and explored how his work critically reflects and propositions new relationships.
Quinsy Gario (Curaçao/St. Maarten/the Netherlands), is a graduate of the Master Artistic Research from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague and has a background in media studies, gender studies and postcolonial studies. His work focuses on decolonial remembering and disruption. His most well known work Zwarte Piet Is Racisme critiqued the general knowledge surrounding the racist Dutch practice of Black Pete. He won the Royal Academy Master Thesis Prize 2017, the Black Excellence Award 2016, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival Silver Award 2015, the Dutch Caribbean Pearls Community Pearl Award 2014 and the Hollandse Nieuwe 12 Theatermakers Prize 2011. He is a member of the pan-African artist collective State of L3, a 2017/2018 BAK fellow, a Humanity In Action Senior Fellow and currently a participant of the APASS program.