Keeping the peels

Keeping the Peels
Katrīna Biksone
25/09 – 24/10/2026

I’m working for something larger than me. Gloved sharp fingers raking at the rough, cold dirt. Plucking, peeling, peeking through. I cannot stop the waterfalls; they are flooding my soil. This garden has outgrown me; I cannot tame it. The sense of fear calls for trust… no, rather – forces it upon.

The deeply affective quality in Biksone’s painting accumulates in each and every layer of her works. In this series under “Keeping the Peels”, she confronts the heaviness of duty and submission, sorrow and disgust.

Through the symbolic position of the gardener, we encounter a complex structure of desire. This position necessarily entails submission to caretaking; one has to labour for her fruits and persevere with enthusiasm despite the whims of the weather. What happens when this desire overfloods, enriches her soil, and sprouts an abundance that outgrows her own capacities? Paradoxically, this overgrowth is not the effect of a neglectful attitude, but rather it is precisely due to a strict and tainted devotion to her object, which flips and produces untamable wilderness. The smothering excess of her desire rots on fertile lands.

Loss of satisfaction and the emergence of surplus enjoyment are cut from the same primordial fabric, according to Lacanian theory. Thus, excesses of pleasure/pain lurk after the quieting of insufficient words. Meaning is subdued, revealing a traumatic Real core. The gardener mourns a plucked flower; it melts through her fingers. A dusty shadow laments the view into a haze. Heavy-heartedness can quickly slip into dissociation. Once knocked out, sleepwalking employs a game of hide-and-seek. In these fantasies, she can pick and peel, lift the veil and take a peek. Still, it is not advisable to shine a flashlight and expose each dark corner of the unconscious. The piles of pieces scatter, and all that surfaces is a parallel reflection.

These experiences of embracing a signifier, accepting a role in a play, importantly, also reflect a dual attitude. Confrontation is pointed both from the subject towards its object of desire, and these overgrowths confront her back. The skins that form a protective barrier between outside and inside become dissected and withered. When these lines between self and other are blurred, the result is a reversed pathological mutualism. The worried surface is defecated; the relationship appears self-destructive, yet the roots keep expanding and thriving. But just like in the case of hoarding, the more expansive it gets, the more fragile are the pegs upholding such a structure.

The birds hatch and break free from their cage, just to flutter back and peck at its wires.

Text author: Katrīna Jauģiete

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga Municipality