"Imprints" (2023)
Photography, print on dibond, text, personal archive materials (photographs), video: “Los Compadres” 1 h 46 min 51 sec, 3 min 39 sec
The departure point of the artist's research was her encounter with Dr. A. A. Duchi in Zanzibar. He was one of the first exchange students from then newly independent Tanzania who was given a stipend to study medicine in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and had fond memories of visiting Riga at the time.
Similar student exchange programs were set up across the Eastern Bloc, and Latvia was hosting international students from many countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East as well as Latin America at the Riga Institute of Civil Aviation Engineers.
Through newly created portraits, interviews, and archival materials Inga Erdmane retells the now largely forgotten story of international students of aviation focusing on their daily lives and the friendships they built. Most of them left Riga in the 1990s when Latvia regained independence, but also the stipends were revoked and post-socialist nationalism replaced the Soviet politics of “friendship of peoples”.
"Photography has taken me to places I would never have gone otherwise and introduced me to wonderful people. It never ceases to amaze me or to keep me experimenting — looking for new ways to express myself visually and exploring the relationship between society and the individual."
/ Photo credit: Kristīne Madjare / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art