Rīma
Ieva Kraule-Kūna
27/09 – 2/11/2024
When the voice of neighbors’ rooster rings out in the pitch-black darkness and I have to sink my feet into thick fog slippers when I get out of bed, I open my mouth wide to fill it with three months of sunshine and foreign sweat. Mrs. Pattison, Mr. Zucchini and little Pumpkin – jump, all of you, into the oven’s mouth! Feed my growling belly, lest it wake the wolves, lure the bears, and eat me!
Someone’s love is jumping into their lap – windowsills full of light courgette bodies, cupboards full of round pumpkins. Happy are the people who have country folk! Maybe when the shelves at home are bursting with autumn bounty, when the numbers on the lids of the cake jars in the cellar reach back into the distant past, when the potatoes have sprouted long octopus tentacles and the cabbage barrel is roaring in the corner, bigger than myself, maybe then one can feel the satiety, but I have no cellar and an insatiable appetite drives me to stuff my mouth with a pretzel with a pumpkin with a fish with a parrot with a shoe with a dog with a sheepskin coat with the latest electrical appliance. While I stuff my giant mouth into the corner, someone equally hungry shouts with an empty mouth. When they eat, I’ll grill my horns against the wall and scream.
Put a crown of crows on my head, burn me in hot flames – may the harvest be good to the lords, may the hunger depart!
Ieva Kraule-Kūna (1987) was born in Riga. She has MA in Fine Arts from Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. She mostly produces sculptural objects using various materials (ceramics, stone, metal, etc.), accompanying them with short stories, where absurd adventures of fictive characters alternate with cockeyed interpretations of historical facts. In her works, Ieva Kraule-Kūna references fetishism, history, artisanship and aesthetics of the Soviet era while tracing the origins of both personal and collective aesthetic codes. Her most significant solo and duo exhibitions include: “Where My Cards Lay” (2021, Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga), “Artist Crisis Center II – Tact Gear” together with Elīna Vītola (2020, P/////AKT, Amsterdam), “Hot Babas” (2019, Latvian National Museum of Art exhibition hall Arsenāls Radošā Darbnīca, Riga), “α: Deceived Deceivers” (2017, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga), “The person you are trying to reach is not available together” with Aidan Koch (2016, Hester, New York), “Qu’est-ce que ça peut faire tout ça together” with Kaspars Groševs (2015, Shanaynay, Paris), “Nobody Dances Like That Anymore” (2014, Gallery 427, Riga), “…if all you told was turned to gold” (2014, Vita Kuben gallery, Umeå), “11 out of 10” (2013, Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga). Most significant group exhibitions: Paris Internationale(2015, Paris), XII Baltic Triennial (2015, CAC, Vilnius), “Le fragole del Baltico” (2015, CareOf, Milan), “Lily’s Pool” (2015, Art In General, New York). She is also the recipient of the Kim? Residency Award 2017 and, in 2017, spent three months at the Gasworks residency in London. She is a finalist of the Purvītis Prize 2021. She is a co-founder of Gallery 427 in Riga and co-curated its program from 2014 to 2016, and co-headed LOW gallery from 2020 to 2022.
Support: VKKF, Riga City Council