CURATORS

Agnese Baranova (1977) graduated from the Latvian Academy of Culture. For over ten years she has produced the exhibitions at the RIXC Center for New Media Culture, as well as for the RIXC Art Science Festival.

Dianne Beal has worked as an independent curator and art dealer promoting contemporary Russian art since the late 1980s. Dianne earned a Bachelor of Arts in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan and a Master of Arts in International Affairs from the George Washington University. She has been invited as a visiting lecturer at leading US universities and has served as guest curator and juror for various public and private institutions.

Inga Brūvere (1963) is an artist in Latvia. In 2001 she also began curating, and in the past 15 years she has organised several projects and exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. Brūvere is the author of the idea for Riga Photo Month and one of the festival’s founders (2012). She directed the first Riga Photo Month in 2014 and is also one of the founders and organisers of the Riga Photography Biennial.

Aiga Dzalbe (1971) is an art historian and critic. She holds a Master’s degree from the Art Academy of Latvia, where she is currently assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Theory. She has written for Latvian cultural media since 1999 and is one of the organisers of the Riga Photography Biennial. Dzalbe’s professional interests include art history and contemporary phenomena in Latvia and the neighbouring regions, as well as art criticism and issues related to the terminology and vocabulary of visual art.

Andrejs Grants (1955) is a photographer and pedagogue. He has been taking part in exhibitions since 1983, with personal exhibitions held in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Higashikawa (JP), Bielsko-Biała (PL), Athens, Istanbul and elsewhere. Recipient of various awards for his creative work – the Latio Annual Photography Award Gaismas balva (2007), the Diena Annual Award for Culture (2011,) and others. He teaches the basics of art photography at the CCL and has curated several exhibitions of the Annas 2 youth photo studio. He also presents photography masterclasses in Latvia and abroad.

Indrek Grigor (1981) works as the gallery manager of Tartu Art House. He is an art critic for a number of publications in the Baltics, a podcaster and radio host for Estonian National Radio, occasional lecturer at Estonian Academy of Arts, and part-time curator. He has studied semiotics and art history at Tartu University.

Kaspars Groševs (1983) is an artist and a curator who is stuck in Riga and runs 427 Gallery; he occasionally writes and plays music.

Elīna Ķempele (1985) is a curator of culture and art education programmes and trainer of non- formal education. She holds a BA in Arts (Latvian Academy of Culture) and MA in Cultural and Social Anthropology (University of Latvia). She has worked as a curator of education and events at the ARSENĀLS Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art (2014 - 2016) and has participated in diverse interdisciplinary projects, among them - as one of the anthropologists at the project "Life in Motion"(2015) in cooperation with "Elm Media" (LV) and Bergen International Film Festival (NO).

Adam Mazur (1977) works as a freelance curator and editor-in- chief of BLOK magazine. He is assistant professor at the University of Arts in Poznan and author of the books Histories of Photography in Poland 1839-2009 (2010), New Phenomena in Polish Photography after 2000 (2012), Depth of Field. Essays on Polish Photography After 1945 (2014), After the End of Photography (2018). He has curated several group and solo shows in Poland and abroad. Among recent individual exhibitions are shows by Martha Rosler (2014), Pawel Althamer (2015), Artur Zmijewski (2016), Aneta Grzeszykowska (2017). He is currently working on a book on Central European photography.

Tomass Pārups (2000) writes about contemporary art for the newspaper Kultūras Diena (Culture Day) and the culture and art website Arterritory.com, where since 2017 he is also the news editor. He has written introductions for the solo shows of Ēriks Apaļais, Anna Ceipe and Ojārs Pētersons, as well as for Popper Publishing. In 2017, his first book about Maija Kurševa was published (by Neputns, in the series STUDIJA Library). He has curated and participated in several events organised by the artist collective GolfClayderman.

Šelda Puķīte (1986) is an art critic, curator and catalogue editor who currently lives and works in Riga. She studied art history and theory at the Art Academy of Latvia where she received a Master’s degree in 2012 and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on the influence of pop art on Latvian art. From 2014 to 2016 she was head of the Creative Studio exhibition programmes at the ARSENĀLS Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art. As the researcher and curator, Puķīte is especially interested in the points of intersection between art, popular culture and ever-changing social policy in Western society.

Edd Schouten (1972) is an interdisciplinary choreographer and artist based in The Hague where he graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. His work is generally centered around the investigation of space, time and movement. In the past he has twice collaborated with artist Inga Erdmane, both times on invitation of art centre Totaldobze. In 2016 they explored an old Estonian factory where they produced a limited edition artzine and in 2017 they were the driving force of the #KarostaWaterTowerProject in Liepaja.

Marie Sjøvold (1982) was born in Norway, she works with photography, video and photo books. In her photographic work, she tells universal stories where she often uses experiences from her own life and her own family, but she always plays with the boundaries between reality and fiction. Artist has an intimate and playful approach to existentially serious themes. Her books and exhibitions consist of both staged photographs and photographic documents. Sjøvold works consciously across photographic genres in order to ask questions about the strength of photography as a witness of truth and our perception of reality. Sjøvold has published two photo books with Journal Forlag and four self-published photo books. She has exhibited at numerous venues around the world: Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Calouste Gulbenkian in Paris, Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo among others. In 2012 she was awarded the European Photo Exhibition Award. Sjøvold’s work is included in the collections of Fritt Ord (NO), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NO) and the Ministry of Education (NO).