Curators of public programme and associate curator announced for Riga Biennial

The 1st Riga Biennial (RIBOCA1) is pleased to announce the appointment of Kolektivs (Zane Zajančkauska & Ilze Kalnbērziņa Praz) as curators of its public programme, and Solvej Helweg Ovesen as associate curator. Entitled Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, RIBOCA1 will open to the public on the June 2, 2018. The chief curator of the biennial is Katerina Gregos. 

Zane Zajančkauska is a curator, based in Riga. Recently, she co-curated You’ve Got 1243 Unread Messages, at the Latvian National Museum of Art (2017–18), she has also been developing the exhibition programme for the National Library of Latvia and public programme events for the Latvian Center for Contemporary arts and ABLV Charitable Foundation. Previously she collaborated with the director Christine Umpfenbach on the performance Lost Gardens and on the project KAFIČ with artist and architect Apolonija Šusteršič. Zajančkauska obtained her MA in Arts at the Latvian Academy of Culture after completing studies in Political Science; she has also completed the Robert Bosch Stiftung qualification programme in culture management, including one year curatorial praxis at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig. Ilze Kalnbērziņa Praz studied product design at the University of art and design ECAL (École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne), as well as anthropology and philosophy at the University of Lausanne and at Saint-Louis University, Brussels. She worked as a designer for H2E design bureau in Riga as well as heading the visual communication and exhibition design department at the National Library of Latvia. She also created and curated Aristids, a cultural space in Riga. Last year she received the National Design Award of Latvia.

The RIBOCA public programme, which will run until November this year, encompasses performances, talks, debates, symposia, workshops, film screenings and other events. It will establish relationships in the city, inviting international guests to connect with local communities, testing what knowledge can be shared and what interactions set in motion. A series of discussions and debates by leading cultural practitioners and intellectuals as well as a film programme will further explore the themes of Biennial: the speed of change and our ability to adapt to it; the boundaries of the human and the non-human; accelerationism and the impact of new technologies and flows of information. 

Solvej Helweg Ovesen obtained her MA in Arts and Cultural Studies from Copenhagen University and also completed De Appel Curatorial Training Program in Amsterdam in 2003. Since 2015 she is artistic director of Galerie Wedding - Raum für Zeitgenössiche Kunst in Berlin where she curated solo exhibitions with, among others, Henrike Nauman, Sol Calero, Stine Marie Jacobsen, Viron Erol Vert, Emeka Ogboh, Ahmet Ögut, Mariana Castillo Deball, Dafna Maimon, and Simon Fujiwara as part of the projects Post-Otherness Wedding (2015–16) and Unsustainable Privileges (2017–18) in collaboration with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. In 2017, she was a member of the consortium of curators behind the exhibition of Kirstine Roepstorff Influenza - Theatre of Glowing Darkness for the Danish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. She was also curator-in-chief of the Arctic-African performance festival “Songs of a Melting Iceberg - Displaced without Moving,” Nordwind 2017, Berlin. In 2015/2016 she curated the IMAGES 2016 art project An Age of our Own Making with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, in Denmark. Ovesen is the founding director of Grosses Treffen, a yearly professional networking event for Nordic artists and curators and online archive with 800 Nordic artists’ profiles realized in collaboration with and at the Nordic Embassies, Berlin (2013–17). In 2011, Solvej Helweg Ovesen and Katerina Gregos co-curated the 4th Fotofestival Mannheim Heidelberg Ludwigshafen, The Eye is a Lonely Hunter. For the biennial, Ovesen is curating one of the eight venues, Dubulti Art Station, among other things. The exhibition, the Sensorium, will focus on the sum of the human organism’s perceptive tools—creating moments that trigger the senses (other than vision) that have been marginalized, allowing for a much-needed deceleration of perception.

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