“I have always been obsessed with documenting the city and its liminal territories. In turn, I encourage the viewer to become an active investigator in order to decipher the meaning of space and the human activities that might have taken place there. I am drawn to attempts to subtly awaken the curiosity which arises from reflecting on worldly objects in a new way. Objects that have changed their original function, been reused or abandoned. By being photographed, they acquire new or alternative values and meanings – like monuments or remnants of a lost civilization.” – Pēteris Vīksna.

Pēteris Vīksna's solo exhibition This Feels Familiar is a story about urban space and its visual language. Over the course of more than five years, the artist has built up an impressive photo archive, in which he studies the contrasting moods of Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Berlin, Paris, London, Tokyo, Amsterdam and other cities. In Pēteris’s photographs, the urban environment serves as matter – basis for anthropological study. A man-made trajectory can have its meaning altered when subjected to photographic fragmentation. The meanings assigned to a place are forgotten when a framing highlights new details. Writer and curator Charlotte Cotton writes that one of the most dramatic approaches to still life in photography is when photographers investigate how we see (or – on the contrary – do not see) the things that surround us. In this way, attention is drawn specifically to our perception of things. This approach can easily be linked to Vīksna’s work.

He is an intellectual photographer who knowingly creates his notes on the cities of the world as though mapping states of human consciousness. At the same time, his works suggest strong irony and an interest in architectonic paradoxes, which often arise from historical, political and social circumstances.

Over five years, the artist’s collection has grown, changed and developed, often yielding to outside socio-political conditions. Some of the envisioned photographic routes can no longer be followed, but these have been replaced with others, yet to be discovered and understood. The title of the exhibition refers to the process through which the unknown becomes familiar and is made “our own.”

Pēteris Vīksna (LV/NL) is one of the most active Latvian photographers of the new generation. His interest is the collective environment and urban landscapes that contain various contrasts and absurdities. Vīksna is a photographer who strives not to interfere with the urban environment. At the same time, he actively documents his generation in various informal situations where control is his main compositional device.

He has taken part in several group exhibitions, and his works have been included in international publications. In 2021, he held the personal exhibition The Skin (Brīvība, Rīga). In 2024, he took part in the ĒTER project Nail Salon (MAGAZIN, Vienna). In 2023, Vīksna's A Dog’s Gaze (dir. Ieva Aleksejeva) premiered at the RIGA IFF festival. Alongside photography, he works in film and directing. In 2021, he received a Zelta Mikrofons award for the best music video of the year. He currently lives in Amsterdam, where he collaborates with artists from around the world.



Participant: Pēteris Vīksna (LV/NL)
Curator: Auguste Petre (LV)
Image: Pēteris Vīksna, from the series “This Feels Familiar”, photograph, 2021–2025