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International contemporary art festival Survival K(n)it 7 will take place in Riga from 4 to 20 September 2016. with over 40 artists and artist collectives participating. Set in the former building of the National Library of Latvia, it will consist of an exhibition and a program of performative events and discussions. The festival is organised and produced by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Inga Meldere's project Retouch anticipates moving into one of the festival’s premises, uncovering its walls and supplementing them with the fragments of wall paintings or fictive and retouched, like they have always been there, originals. With the use of the image system, that the spectators may be aware of already, there will be a visual narrative created on the walls of the building. The fragments of paintings in the narrative are going to be an interpretation, the retouching of memories about a person’s experience and observations, that have resulted in, what concept of festival has already mentioned- “the avalanche of fortuitousness, and a surprising chain of coincidences, weaving together private and global space”.
The building built in 1910 is a sophisticated example of neo-classicism. The initial wall paintings are a striking example of what could be the origins of Latvian modernism and futurism aesthetics. The taste of the anonymous Latvian craftsman who decorated one of the rooms of this house is surprisingly close to what we are used to recognizing as a work of the classical artists of Italian futurism and Russian avant-garde like Lyubov Popova and Giacomo Balla. Could it be that Riga is the first yet to be discovered place in a cradle of the avant-garde?
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Photo: Alvis Masjuns