In her exhibition Tuesday, the artist Ieva Epnere turns to the subject of herself and an observation of the cyclical nature of life. The impulse behind the series of photographs was the artist's weekly journey along the route Riga–Liepāja–Riga. At the Liepāja Music, Art and Design Secondary School the artist heads the Department of Audiovisual Art, where she also works as a teacher. She returns to Liepāja, a place that holds family history and personal memories for her.

In a cycle of ceaseless motion, Tuesday is a moment before returning to Riga to her family, for the artist becoming a day of focused creative work and the only opportunity to be alone with herself.

It is this awareness of life's cyclical nature that uncovers the interstitial spaces and times in the daily rhythm of movement, wherein self-reflection becomes an impulse in the creation of a work of art, ensuring the viability of artistic practice.

At the same time, Tuesday conceptually continues Epnere's photo series I wish I could tell you / I wish you could tell me, initiated in 2025, in which her personal experience becomes an access point for a broader investigation of identity and memory. These photographs tell of the history of a specific family, but in their totality they capture more collective memories in a more general way. The materiality of images and their expanded boundaries have been a significant aspect of Ieva Epnere's work to date.

The venue of the exhibition, the Mikhail Chekhov Riga Russian Theatre Gallery, reflects the main thesis of the cycle: the arrangement of the works in the space's display window puts the viewer in a position where observation allows the exhibited works to appear sequentially, gradually. The viewer encounters the imprint of something separate and individual, which, through the ceaseless flow of images, also becomes the basis for the exhibition's structure, while the fragile boundary between the deeply personal and the public is dismantled.

Participant: Ieva Epnere (LV)
Curator and text author: Roberta Atraste (LV)
Exhibition design: Ieva Epnere (LV)

Image: Ieva Epnere. From the series 'I wish I could tell you / I wish you could tell me'. 2025