For the exhibition To Be We Need to Know the River, three Baltic artists share their thoughts and emotions about nature – the living, unified system, one of whose elements is human. It's no accident that it takes place in Sigulda, since the unique local landscapes with picturesque river panoramas and Devonian rock outcrops – sandstone cliffs and caves – have been particularly beloved by travellers from as early as the Romantic period in the 19th century. Unfortunately, talking about nature in the 21st century means neither enjoyment of the landscape, nor the struggle against it, but rather talking about the changing climate that threatens us all, about ecology, the greedy exploitation of nature through the use of technologies, the mistaken relationship between humans and nature in which Homo sapiens ignores the survival needs of all other species for the sake of its own convenience.

Contemporary visual art turned to the state of the environment shortly after 1972 when humans truly grasped their common home for the first time, upon seeing the photograph of the Earth from Apollo 17 circulated in mass media outlets. The image taken by an American astronaut was eventually titled The Blue Marble. This visualisation of the world shocked with its revelation that all of us without exception are in the same boat – on an isolated biosphere in the boundless cosmos. Not long afterwards, in 1973, the Gauja National Park was established with the aim of protecting the treasures of the river valley and its environs.

The artists Sabīne Šnē, Kotryna Ūla Kiliulytė and Mari-Leen Kiipli share a perspective on this network of life in accordance with current ecofeminist ideas. These call for replacing the hierarchical understanding of species and human dominance with solidarity, an awareness that nature in its entirety is interdependent and connected in a finely-built network where the tiniest entity has its own important role. In the search for contemporary spirituality, just like in biology, the concept of Gaia, which is borrowed from classical Greek culture, has gained in significance. It treats the planet as a single organism and, in this era of climate transformations, encourages observing how the biosphere and the evolution of organisms influence the fluctuations of global temperatures, seawater salinity, hydrosphere, atmosphere and other environmental factors which affect Earth's liveability.

Sabīne Šnē has borrowed the title of her mixed media installation To Be We Need to Know the River from Ursula K. Le Guin's poem Infinitive. It is an answer to the questions put forward by the installation: “What might Earth look like in the future? Will it continue to be inhabited by both humans and other living organisms? And what can we learn from our neighbours – a variety of living beings and their ways of life?” On this occasion, she studied blue mussels, lichens, dung beetles and mycelium. Mari-Leen Kiipli's video installation is devoted to a scientist who studies anomalies in nature next to a paper mill and over the course of her work discovers deep spiritual kinship with the river. The artist turns to the question of the defencelessness and rightlessness of nature as a living being, referring to the ideas of University of Melbourne's water law expert Erin O'Donnell about decision-making and legislation regarding rivers, and suggests granting rivers the status of a legal person. Kotryna Ūla Kiliulytė makes sensitive use of video, photography, light and text to show climate change, the irreversible man-made processes on the planet, comparing them with the timelines of a woman's pregnancy. The anxiety provoked by her observations is soothed by a lullaby to the fragile, exhausted Earth.



Participants: Mari-Leen Kiipli (EE), Kotryna Ūla Kiliulytė (LT), Sabīne Šnē (LV)
Curator: Inga Brūvere (LV)
Text by: Aiga Dzalbe (LV)
Image: Kotryna Ūla Kiliulytė, from the series Arctic Swell, 2023