The exhibition The Invisible Images is a spatial installation, created from analogue photographs, two 8mm ciné films, two historical texts and several research articles. The installation is made up of black and white analogue photographs taken by the artist, wartime photographs from the photography archives of the National Library of Latvia and the Latvian War Museum, and two 8mm ciné films shot by the artist, which have also been installed in the exhibition space.
Ieva Balode describes her new exhibition: ‘It seems, most historical discourses tend to focus on nations, human race as the either the victims and suffers of political systems or in contrary, as their followers and heroes. However, when we actually view these photographs in our family albums we think about the people we see in the context of family and family history. War is a phenomenon that has been experienced by almost every Latvian and European resident in various generations either further back in time or more recently. Family albums are filled with granddads’ wartime photographs, which have been preserved either as family trophies or as never healing wounds. But even though these images have been heavily present most of our lives as well as in our recent history, have they really helped us to understand war as a political and psychological phenomenon? And after all does war with its participants only exist in old photographs and history books?
While drawing references from the experiments in social psychology carried out by Solomon Ash, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, this is a tale of psychological reality experienced by an individual upon encountering and ultimately losing one’s identity in the social environment.’
As part of this exhibition on 10 February at 6.30pm, there will be a film screening / discussion The Analogue Image with the London based expert of experimental cinema Karel Doing and the emerging Lithuanian artist of analogue cinema Vytautas Juozenas.
Ieva Balode holds an MA in Visual Communication from the Art Academy of Latvia and since 2005 has been actively participating in group exhibitions, as well as several short film and video festivals. The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art first collaborated with Ieva Balode in 2011 as part of the ‘Survival Kit 3’ festival, during which Ieva carried out her photography project Bez tēva/Fatherless. After the festival this project travelled to the Latvian Museum of Photography and Kandava Art Gallery as a solo exhibition. Alongside her personal experimentation with the black and white image, Ieva also works as an educator and organises experimental cinema and short film screenings at Kino Bize cinema.
The exhibition will be open until 19 February.
The exhibition is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation.