Eternal Sough, 2022 - ongoing
I have a feeling that the sea is pulling me in today. The lump in my chest tightens. The eyes deceive. It seems that I see on the horizon that he is coming home. In the meanwhile, the sea is booming. The eternal sough makes an imprint in the depths of my memory. It is time to go with the flow.
The series Eternal Sough was created with a focus on relationships. Relationships with water, relationships with partners, the problems in relationships, and with communication as well. What are the emotions we live with, which ones do we know how to express, which ones do we keep within ourselves, and for which have we not yet found verbal equivalents? How do we find a common language? How much do we talk in circles? How do we communicate when we are not physically together?
The inspiration for the work and its theme can be found in stories about and with sailor's wives. It delves into emotions such as longing, anger, reflection, and adaptation. It also explores parallel lives, where partners spend certain parts of their lives apart, often missing important moments and frequently losing crucial conversations due to their physical absence. People from various professions, dealing with the challenges of the pandemic and war, living separate lives but moving forward.
The sailor's wife gazes at the horizon. In doing so, an illusory feeling arises that they are closer to each other. Beyond the unseen lies, what may be closer than it seems. She spends her time engaged in handcrafts, embroidering with silk thread – delicate yet strong. Through her craft, she weaves, leaving behind worries, pain, thoughts, and adventures. The knitting expands, threads connect, and emotions soften. On the other side, the sailors themselves, being away and experiencing the power, beauty, and enigma of the sea, also fill their time. In the past, they used to embroider their sea experiences, but today they send photographs instead.
Aqueous, 2015 - ongoing
The impulse to work on the subject of water came from not understanding how it can powerfully attract me and simultaneously push away. As much as I admire water's grandiosity and beauty, I also always feared it. Water's constant movement, its formlessness, diversity and changeability is the motivation to research this theme further and to create art. Working on the subject is contemplating the ever-changing aspect of life, us and photography. The moment when one thinks to have seen the shape of water, it is already gone. Similarly, the way how we feel about water and life is dependent on our experiences and circumstances, thus, constantly shifting. We sometimes forget that all the waters, as well as us, are connected – the relationship between humans and water is reciprocal.
I am interested in malleability of image's physical form and visual meaning through the ideas of repetition, processing, multilayering and polarities: still/moving, abstract/representational, knowledge/illusion, fear/comfort. Layering is both physical and conceptual. I work on water’s properties, by using transparent material, layering images, cutting and organizing them in the space as if dissecting water and looking for recognizable only to realize that it is an illusion. I construct these realities of knowledge, movement and depth within the frames, sometimes also drawing the lines and adding tape, to secure stability even though it is not characteristic of water. I often photograph the same body of water multiple times, stacking the images to convey that nothing is unambiguous, there are layers of intricacy. The three-dimensional aspect in my work questions photography's confinement to flat, two-dimensional pieces on the wall. When I make photographs, I trust my intuition and process, every finished piece is the beginning of a new one.
A Pile of.., 2019 - ongoing
A Pile of.. is a series about the fragmentation of photography and its instant nature.
Fragility of State, 2019 - ongoing
Fragility of State deals with ideas of vulnerability, change and frame of mind.
Back from Dust, 2015
Back From Dust contemplates the archaic state of photography. Taken underwater, the images were printed on the non-emulsion side of the transparency, letting the inks continue to flow, and, while drying, they also accumulated the dust from the space. By letting the photographs to continue to develop, I let them to brake down to regain a new life after the inks have set. They reflect on the pollution of water & contamination of image.
Ambiguous Research at Seven Impossible Seas, 2015
Ambiguous Research at Seven Impossible Seas examines the life suspended in water. It explores hypothetical undiscovered existence in the deep sea. As the deep waters are so less known, the creatures I construct could actually live somewhere.
IT, 2012 - ongoing
My favourite running path is through the forest that leads to the seaside at my childhood's village. I have taken this route countless times but it was not until one day years later when I took a picture. since then, every time I visit my parents and go for a run, I take a cellphone picture. It is always the same spot but never the same image. It is the spot, the sea, the change, the horizon.
Domesticities, 2011 - 2014
Domesticities is a portrait of my family and a means to better understanding such terms as home and belonging, my roots and identity. It is at the same time a story of Latvia, its distinctive characteristics and traditions.
I visualise Latvia after two decades of independence from Soviet Union through personal perspective. I am interested to find out what are the traditions that were carried on from the ancestors, what influences got appropriated during the Soviet times and how the new identity in again independent Latvia has been shaped.
A la Recherche d’Elan, 2012
A LA RECHERCHE D' ELAN*
* In French:
1) run-up
2) momentum
3) impulse
4) surge
5) the life force
6) elk
Could This Become My Home? 2008
While the city exists without me, I am searching for something familiar but instead I find myself.
Living in a foreign place is to look for answers in the void that is filled with my needs.
My wanderings in Lyon led me to a new truth - I have to leave to learn what I am coming back to.
Could this become my home?