Until the 19th of May 2024, the exhibition Where to Hide! is on at Zuzeum. The exhibition presents more than 350 works created by Latvian artists under Soviet occupation from the Zuzāns Collection, the Latvian National Museum of Art and private collections, and materials from the Latvian State Archive of Audiovisual Documents.
The exhibition is curated by Sandra Krastiņa (painter, establisher and head of the Museum of the Artists’ Union of Latvia (2001–2006), editor-in-chief of the Neputns Publishers magazine Dizaina Studija (2006–2012), book editor, exhibition curator) and designed by Reinis Liepiņš and Sudraba Arhitektūra, whose field of activity encompasses the adaptation of culture-historical heritage, design, interior design and architecture. His recent significant projects include Hanzas Perons in Riga, the Kurtuve of Valmiera Drama Theatre, and the restoration of the Riga Castle convent / National History Museum of Latvia.
Where to Hide! – not a question but a scream of realisation in the face of Soviet reality appears in the spontaneous caption for a 1954 drawing by artist Roberts Stārosts.
This writing, with its grammatically incorrect Latvian form, is a poignant indicator of the existential choices people had to make. In their way, these works, produced during the Soviet occupation from 1945 to 1990, are like authentic witnesses to the dues paid to the powers and the spirit of resistance and disobedience, which the artists have succeeded in incorporating into their works.
Thus, step by step, year after year, from one generation to the next, through the notion of free thought that is encoded in art – alongside or despite the communist slogans – it was possible to pierce and almost physically chip away at the might of the erected Iron Curtain, until at the time of the National Awakening state independence came to be seen in Latvia as an attainable goal.
The exhibition’s narrative is formed from two points of reference, counterposing the set of themes co-opted by the authorities with the artists’ endeavours in the language of free expression. The representatives saw artists’ creative formal discoveries of the Soviet regime as open insubordination; the freethinking blossoming of form in the 1960s was labelled “formalism”, and this development alarmed the political elite. Therefore ideological control never loosened its grip over visual art, while the censorship did not persistently monitor the segment of decorative and applied arts and design.
To trace the artistic heritage of almost fifty years, the exhibition highlights artefacts from different artistic disciplines: painting, graphic art, sculpture, graphic design, posters, photography, and original and industrial design.
The exhibition features a diverse collection of artworks by renowned artists, including Zenta Logina, Aleksandra Beļcova, Leonards Laganovskis, Māris Ārgalis, Leonīds Āriņš, Auseklis Baušķenieks, Biruta Baumane, Boriss Bērziņš, Ilmārs Blumbergs, Andris Breže, Juris Dimiters, Andris Grinbergs, Frančeska Kirke, Ģirts Muižnieks, Ivars Poikāns, Miervaldis Polis, Līga Purmale, Georgs Šenbergs, and many others. The diverse styles and artistic expressions on display provide a rich tapestry of creativity, showcasing each artist’s unique perspectives and talents.
Today, living in an independent country in a situation where a contemporary art museum is yet to be built in Latvia, and there is no place offering a chronological presentation of visual art from the second half of the previous century, awareness of the significance and role of Soviet period art for our contemporary reality cannot be taken for granted.
One of the impulses behind the making of this exhibition was to highlight art as an instrument of unbounded information and action, as a kind of internal combustion engine for the staying power of national identity.
