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Exhibition and public programme "All’s Good Between Us"

15.02. - 31.03.2024. (Exhibition prolonged until 4. April!)

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) invites to the exhibition and public programme All’s Good Between Us. Through the interpretations of various generations of artists, researchers and curators, the project invites to think beyond the idea of identity as something permanent and stable, addressing stigma and fear of otherness. The exhibition and accompanying programme takes place at 60A-21 Dzirnavu Street and is welcoming visitors until March 31.

All’s Good Between Us brings gender and queer discourses into interaction with socio-political contexts in society, identifying cracks between identities, minorities and different generations. At the same time, the project questions the ways in which both individual and LGBTQ+ community histories are narrated and documented, and how ingrained assumptions normalize and justify violence and intolerance.

The title of the exhibition All’s Good Between Us is taken from the play of the same name by Polish writer Dorota Masłowska. The play tells the story of three generations of women living in a small apartment in Warsaw, observing in their everyday lives the complex panorama of Polish history in the last century, including issues of social and national identity. Also the participants of this exhibition and public programme from different generations inhabit the apartment together – the venue of the exhibition on Dzirnavu Street – communicating with each other and inviting guests to share their experiences and reflections. For example, designer Rūta Jumīte and curator of educational programs Ieva Laube, in collaboration with critic and researcher Vents Vīnbergs, have set up a "Living Room of Stories", which invites people to document LGBTQ+ histories in Latvia in the form of social action. The event explores the possibilities and limits of mediating the documentation of historical issues, and how to affect social processes through this knowledge.

Andra Silapētere, the curator of the exhibition, emphasizes "Today's artistic practices often go beyond the artwork as one specific form of expression, which is why the public programme of the exhibition is very important, as it aims to create an informal platform for conversations and exchange of knowledge not only in Latvia but also in the Baltic context. The public programme includes discussions, workshops and film screenings."

The programme features artists, curators and researchers who are currently working on gender and LGBTQ+ topics, through both exhibitions and broader research, highlighting the specifics of the region in historical and contemporary contexts:

Annemarija Gulbe, Antti Jarvi (FI), Atis Jākobsons, Eleanore de Montesquiou (EE/FR), Zane Rozīte, Felicita Pauļuka (1925-2014), Ieva Laube, Igors Gubenko, Ingrīda Pičukāne, Jaana Kokko (FI), Kalle Hamm (FI), Konstantīns Žukovs, Krišjānis Elviks, Mētra Saberova, Monta Cimdiņa, Raisa Maudit (ES), Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė (LT), Rūta Jumīte, Taka Taka (GR), Vents Vīnbergs, Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011), Viktorja Kolbenšnikova and Augustas Čičelis (LT), Andreas Kalkun (EE) and others. Curator: Andra Silapētere.

The exhibition is open to visitors from February 15 to March 31.
Opening hours:
Wed - Fri: 14.00-19.00
Sat: 12-17.00

Exhibition prolonged until 4 April!
Opening hours on 2, 3 and 4 April:
14.00 - 19.00


The exhibition and the public program All’s Good Between Us is part of the project "Islands of Kinship: A Collective Guide for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions", supported by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia. The project is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia (SCCF), the Nordic Culture Fund and Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

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Detailed programme

16.02.
18.00
Workshop by Taka Taka. Mothers Mothering Mothers: Dragging Warmly
The aim of this workshop is to reveal the act of dressing/undressing and masking/unmasking as an undeniable personal and social engagement by having fun while understanding one’s impact, the realities of character and their production from fingernail to toenail. I will present performative exercises exploring character creation with tools which I have developed from my camp-dragtivist educational practice.
These tools are for our group's gaze and organs, no for photographic representation.
I will also share anecdotes about my experience of being drag mothered by Jennifer Hopelezz and mothering my drag kids as a para-family constellation of mutual empowerment.
Let's reorganize ourselves as a warmer individual and softer social interconnected entity!

21.02.
18.00
Mária Takács Secret Years. Film evening
Mária Takács is a Hungarian documentary filmmaker, video journalist, and civil activist. Her film Secret Years tells the story of Hungarian women aged 45-70 and explores the lives of lesbians during communism and since then. The film reveals stories of repression in the 1960s and 1970s, of subcultures and the alternative scene in the 1980s, and of political movements and minority rights in the 1990s when democratic values were threatened by the spread of nationalism and its rhetoric.

28.02.
18.00
Kalle Hamm Teta Veleta. Film evening
The film is based on early letters and texts from the Red Notebooks (Quaderni Rossi) by film director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). It was shot in Casarsa and in Rome where he lived and wrote these texts. Pasolini was aware of his homosexuality at a very early age, causing an inner moral conflict with his Catholicism and leading to feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

08.03.
18.00
Reading Circle. Conversation
Participants: Jaana Kokko (FI), Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė (LT), Zane Rozīte (LV)
Keywords: past and present of women's movements politics, borders, generations, emancipation.

The core and starting point of the conversation is the film The Reading Circle by Finnish artist Jaana Kokko, which discusses the meaning of political and its relationship to gender. In the film, four women meet in an apartment and discuss the meaning they give to the term "political" and try to define the image of a political person and a political woman.

The conversation aims to shed light on different women's movements as well as individual stories that have influenced both social and cultural developments in the Baltics taking into account equality and gender questions. The conversation will be introduced by a screening of the film by Jan Kokko, followed by a commentary by the artist on the making of the film, elaborating on the role and position of women in the context of societal processes. The participants will then discuss their research on the role of women in the organisation of both political and social processes in recent history, enabling an understanding of the emancipation movements in the 19th century and the development of the social movement in the 20th century. The participants will discuss both the emancipation movements in the region in the 19th century and the debate about equality questions in the Soviet period.

Jaana Kokko The Reading Circle (Introduction to What is Political) (2010) is an experimental film about the pleasure of collective reading. Four women meet in a private apartment in Helsinki to discuss the meaning they attach to the term "political". Through this intellectual discussion inspired by Hannah Arendt’s thinking, and the monologues of each of the women, they define the image of a political individual and a political woman: What does ‘political’ mean? How to define ‘womanly political’? Is it possible to attain a revolutionism that transcends generations and redefine ‘political’?

In the work speech is divided into different forms: reading out loud, simultaneous reading, Brechtian dialogue and monologue. These forms of speech include public and individual, even intimate language. A language that defines the work to a large extent both visually and additively is the sign language. Although the work is characterized by a pluralistic discussion, the emphasis of the work lies on its visual and auditive aspects instead of narration.

In her presentation, Zane Rozīte will outline how in the 19th century women's right to higher education was conceptualised as the dominant demand of the women's emancipation movement. Outlining the main trends in the theoretical and practical transformation of women's higher education in the Russian Empire, including the Baltic provinces, Rozīte will describe the medicalisation of the problem of women's higher education, educational nomadism and political revolutionarism. In Latvia, women gained full rights to higher education after the establishment of an independent state, which ushered in the feminisation of higher education and certain professions, and at the same time encouraged active public engagement in discussions about what constitutes an academically educated woman and what are her political, economic and social responsibilities and roles in society.

Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė will delve into the intersection of gender ideology, political movements, and contemporary cultural practices, focusing on three key axes of research and practice. Firstly, the historical context of gender ideology during the perestroika era, examining societal expectations placed on women, particularly regarding unpaid social work. Secondly the establishment of the Women's Party in Lithuania in 1996 and its program, which mirrored the challenges and uncertainties of the 1990s, reflecting its relevance to contemporary gender issues. Lastly, Bagdžiūnaitė will connect these historical narratives to her work in the field of culture, illustrating how they inform and shape her current practices and perspectives.

19.03.
18.00
Thirty-Three Monsters. Conversation

Participants: Dalībnieki: Eleonore de Montesquiou (EE/FR), Deniss Hanovs (LV), Jenny Zinovieff (GB)

Thirty-Three Monsters by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal (1866-1907) is a novel in diary form, first published in 1907 in St Petersburg, but banned due to the fact that it was the first lesbian novel in Russia. The text was published as a bilingual English-Russian edition in 2022 with illustrations by the artists Eleonore de Montesquiou and Varvara Toropkova.

To reflect on the making of the book today and Lidiya Zinovieva-Annibal's text within the broader framework of questions of identity, sexuality and emancipation in the past and today, the conversation will feature artist Eleonore de Montesquiou and cultural historian and researcher Deniss Hanovs, as well as historian Jenny Zinovievff.


“Thirty-Three Monsters” by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal the first work of Russian literature to deal openly with the theme of lesbianism and critiques the objectifying male gaze. is a young woman’s intimate diary. It is written to another woman, Vera, her lover. Vera is older than the narrator and forces her to sit for 33 male painters who will paint 33 versions of her body, the 33 monsters. Vera initiated this search for truth, the exposure of her lover’s beauty to men and to art.


Born in St Petersburg into an aristocratic family, Zinovieva-Annibal was a rebel and nonconformist throughout her life and in her work. She was an emblematic figure of symbolist circles in Petersburg in the early 1900s. With Viatcheslav Ivanov, her second husband Lydia organised the famous Wednesday meetings in their home the „Tower“ where Petersburg intellectuals and artists of the Silver Age gathered at the turn of the century. Lydia Zinovieva died of scarlet fever at the age of 41, shortly after the “Thirty-Three Monsters”.

Eleonore de Montesquiou is French-Estonian, she was born in 1970 in Paris. Her work revolves around the articulation between private and official histories, personal and national identities. It tackles the intricacies and ambiguities of living in the margins, based on her personal experience of uprootedness. Eleonore is primarily working with film, she tapes testimonies, creating prosthetic memories of repressed histories. In her documentary-informed works, her camera becomes the voice of these voiceless people. Her work is based on a documentary approach, translated into films, drawings, and texts; it deals mainly with issues of integration/ immigration/ meaning of a nation in Estonia. Since 2007, she has filmed women living in the Estonian-Russian border town of Narva: “Na Grane”, in 2016, she started working with asylum seekers from French-speaking countries in Estonia: “Hope is no home” while pursuing a long-time film project in France with peasants in the Haute-Alpes: “Traverses”.


Dr. art. Deniss Hanovs, (1977) wrote his PhD. On cultural practices of Latvian national movement in Latvian media of the 19th century and since then (2003) teaches at various universities in Latvia and abroad. Since 2021 he is a professor at the Latvian Art Academy. He is also DJ and created series of talks on integration issues in Russian language radio Baltkom (Kultprosvet) and also a series of stories dedicated to the development of European opera history of the 18th century.


Jenny Zinovieff lives in Cambridge UK and worked for twenty years building up the alumni relations programme for the university. She was married, also for twenty years, to composer and musician Peter Zinovieff and began researching the history of the Zinovieff family, finding writings by ancestors going back to 1601. She translated private memoirs by Leo Alexandrovich (Peter’s grandfather) and his father Alexander Dmitrievich, which led in turn to the life and work of his sister, Lydia, her 33 Monsters and a collaboration with Eléonore, another direct descendant.


27.03.
15.00
All’s Good Between Us. Symposium
Participants: Kalle Hamm (FI), Antti Jarvi (FI), Andreas Kalkun (EE), Rūta Jumīte and Ieva Laube (LV), Igors Gubenko (LV), Viktorja Kolbenšnikova and Augustas Čičelis (LT), Raisa Maudit (ES). Moderator: Andra Silaptere (LV)

The symposium will focus on gender, sexuality and queer questions, analyzing them in the context of art and culture in the Baltic States and the Baltic Sea Region. It will bring together cultural workers, artists and researchers who are currently, in different projects, revising and highlighting the representation of queer history today, focusing on the documentation of stories, archival accumulation and the interpretation of processes concerning broader social developments. The participants of the symposium will discuss how do we currently interpret different issues of queer history in the region, how queer culture might be documented in the present and the future, how to consider the engagement of the past with the present through a queer perspective?

Visit / Accessibility
Accessibility
The exhibition can be accessed via the courtyard of Dzirnavu iela 60A (next to the restaurant "Vairāk saules"), please follow the signs on site. The nearest specialised disabled parking space is located at Dzirnavu iela 58. To access the exhibition, you must use the mobile elevator which is attached to a manual wheelchair. You have to overcome 5 steps. Please note that the nearest accessible facilities are located across the street at Galleria Riga, 67 Dzirnavu Street. For assistance to access the exhibition, please contact +371 26079903.

For people with sensory sensitivities and perceptual difficulties
The artworks are located in an apartment, arranged in several small rooms with both daylight and natural light. There are no works with sound in the exhibition.

Tickets
Admission is free.