19/02/2019 Severine Grosjean
Latvian video art and its development begins with a camera in the hands of artists in the 20th century. The collapse of the Soviet regime and the promotion of the art of intrusion – using these new media of expression, create an artistic phenomena more and more diversified.
Katrina Neiburga’s work looks like a journey into a historical time, but that stops taking the major turning points in history. The work atmosphere of Latvian is “poetic” and “Nordic”. She explores the cultural layers which form her background – post-Soviet, pro-Western, apolitical or otherwise – very political. She revisits history and reflects on here and now. Her works have almost the quality of a report. It sets a relation to an inner emotional world. She tells both collective stories and her personal story. Through photographs and films, she “documents” aspects of the past. It examines forms of free expression or cultural phenomenon whose place in history is hung up.
Katrina Neibruga uses an anthropological view, a playful fascination with the rituals of daily life, an interest in the differences between gendered roles, a study of the process of memory. In her work “Armpit”, she gets closer to the microscosm that are the garages. During the communist era, men found themselves there without any social distinction, except for the “official” hobbies supervised by the communist authorities. People work in garages to reduce costs. In the Soviet era, they were allowed to store their old accumulated objects. The garages were a place of a great diversity of activities.The garage is both, the job and the hobby. It allows them to stop the time facing the neoliberalism. Her work was featured in the 2016 edition of the Coachella Music Festival, conceived as a tribute to the Soviet era of “garage mechanics”, or to those men who retreated from the world to invent and take care of their leisure.
“Fluxus”, for twenty years, despite the splits and exclusions, will remain faithful to his utopia of departure: to shatter the limits of artistic practice, to break the boundaries between the arts and to build a definitive link between art and life . This is the path that Katrina follows in her work on women-taxi drivers. She discusses the social and economic conditions that define women. She realizes another feminist and socially investigative provocation: take an old taxi, take the role of taxi driver and, using the socially difficult picture to accept of a young, attractive woman taxi driver, and she starts the conversation with the passengers, who are recorded on video. Her practice nourished by deep reflection is still relevant. She shows a renewed energy of the study of female image.
In her last work “Kuku Marija”, she proposes a cross analysis of rituals from traditional societies, a source of mutations that stop surprising. After a long way, Katrina digs a hole before lying there and covering herself. Shortly after, she “reborn”. This work brings to bear two aspects of Katrina’s artistic practice: on the one hand, anthropology, heir to a lively debate on the question of ritual, and, on the other hand, the history of art, a discipline directly concerned with artistic performances, but also curious of non-Western traditions involving the body. The body is transformed during the performance, establishing in this design an out of time during which the body is subjected to a set of transformations. She is immersed in a second state.
Katrina Neiburga offers insights into the dynamics of the fabric of individuality in contemporary Western societies. The works of the Latvian artist are sources of actions and emotions. They are highly reflective of the process of self-construction and the essential role that others play as witnesses and as resources.
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