Something Does Remain
Installation, 2012
The ultimate ‘escape from the rat race’ is, presumably, death. But the thought of dying resists being thought, doesn’t it? Something is always getting in the way, or getting into your eye... and any thinking of dying is a no-go. This is approximately where I have got to: sometimes the thought of dying is horrifying. Sometimes it serves as a reason for a joke.
Dying, however, is just half the problem. There is a much more disturbing question, posed by Italian Maurizio Cattelan: ‘is there life before death?’ Is it even possible to live it in some manner, despite the ashes and dust? My work is a naïve and optimistic salute to the human longing for a meaningful life (whatever that means) and the traces left behind by this meaningful life. One would, after all, like to think that even if everything has gone horribly wrong, somewhere and somehow ‘something does remain’.
Traces, traces... Wheels leave traces! It is so obvious. A car drives away; the traces left by its wheels remain. What is left when a person goes away? Surely something has to remain? Bones. Clothing. Various objects in the tip behind the outdoor loo and up in the loft. Letters (hard to believe, but they are still being left behind...). Books! Phew, that’s a relief. Books do remain!
In general, however, it is all quite grim. If you start inspecting the tip behind the outdoor loo too closely, it isn’t too good at all...
My work consists of objects found, discarded, thrown away, abandoned, hoarded, hidden, dug up or encountered by the side of the road and in the cupboards around our house in the country. (I found the wasp nest in an old wardrobe.
The little blue mug rose out of the dead leaves when I was cutting back the lilac bushes. The bones were found while digging in the garden. The German soldier’s helmet was – of course – In the loft.) I put all of it on wheels. And now it drives around and leaves traces. As simple as that. (R.J.)
Downshifting? It is already fourth summer (since the birth of my daughter) that I am spending in the countryside, some 180 km from Riga. In early May we are both brought here, and in September we are taken home. Summer life in the country goes like this: I get water from the little stream by the house, and milk and eggs from the neighbour; bread is either baked by me, or bought on Thursdays, from Pretty Inesīte at the mobile shop van. I sow lettuce in the garden (miraculously, it does grow, all by itself). An internet connection is available 2 kilometres away at the village library. Newspapers and magazines are also the same distance away, at the village post office. Company - mostly consists of my young daughter and the 85-year-old neighbour lady. The world is like a giant pair of lungs – it inhales and exhales. I don’t think we have pneumonia or anything like that. It’s more like some slight shortness of breath, or perhaps the lowest point of an exhalation. And of course I do not think that escaping to the country can fundamentally change something, or save you from anything. Of course it can’t. It’s just that this summer life in the country suddenly adds an incredibly soft and warm texture to the usualroughness of days.
Artist's Bio:
Rasa Jansone’s paintings are mostly conceptual. Her sequential, slightly robust and original painted environment, featuring a range of ready-made artefacts and found objects, depicts anthropomorphic beings with large eyes and lacking mouths. Themes for the works spring from a reflection on personal experience combined with that of social and historical context. Literature plays a major role in the work of the artist. For instance, the exhibition “Rear-View Mirror” (2011, Nabaklab) was a direct distillation of the novel “Peeling the Onion” by Gunther Grass. Rasa’s work is characterized by a refined aesthetic of thinking. She expresses the subject of her work in a written or spoken manner that is both cultivated and literarily self-contained. Most of her work and exhibitions, however, remain without written descriptions. As a result, while engagement with her work requires time and concentration, it brings forth unexpected surprises, sorrows and reflections. Her installations and spatial objects are fashioned along the same line. The artist once said: “I think a lot about what it is that am I entitled to exhibit, these doubts are ever present with me. I don’t think that it should go without saying – hi, my name is so and so, now, please pay attention to me”. Rasa Jansone has a Master’s degree from the Art Academy of Latvia (2002) and has graduated from the Faculty of Textiles at the Riga Design and Arts School (1996). Rasa has exhibited her work and participated in group exhibitions and projects since 2005. The titles of Jansone’s exhibitions give an indication of her life and artistic practice: “The Secret Life of Snow-White” (Sniegbaltītes slepenā dzīve, 2005), “Little People” (Cilvēciņi, 2006), “The Hopes of a Mother” (Mammas cerības, 2007), “Rear-View Mirror”(Atpakaļskata spogulis, 2011). (I.L.)