PAiR* Residency

Pāvilosta Artists in Residency is an international interdisciplinary place of residence for creative people that provides artists-in-residence and other creative professionals with time, space and other resources for research, experimenting and professional development. The Residency is willing to promote the emergence of various new, world-exploring and reflective art forms, bringing together specialists from various fields for development of intercultural cooperation, interdisciplinary knowledge and promotion of location-related artistic research.

You can find out more about the mission of the residency on PAiR homepage.

 

Location

PAiR is located on the shore of the Baltic Sea in Pāvilosta. The 500 km long coast has played a significant role in the geography, politics and culture of Latvia and has influenced both local occupations and culture. PAiR is situated on the edge of the Grey Dune nature reserve that covers 42 hectares of land and was established to protect the Latvia’s widest dune.

Building

The residency is located in a historical wooden house, built in 1901, and completely renovated and refurbished in 2021. PAiR residency offers rooms and resources for artists, writers, researchers and other creative professionals in various fields for experimentation, research and professional development. It houses four individual rooms for residence, two studios for creative work, a library with several open workplaces, an art gallery, and a weaving studio, where the local weavers of Pāvilosta will work. Each individual room of the residents is equipped with amenities, and there is a shared kitchen and separate dining room with a common table. The residency features artworks from the collection of VV Foundation.

The artwork of Katja Novitskova is on public display on the north facade of the building.

 

 

 

Application and Processing of Applications

There are several open calls each year – one of the places in the residency is reserved for a resident of Latvia, while the other three are intended for individual professional artists, writers, translators, curators and critics of all disciplines and all nationalities for the purpose of realizing a project proposal presented in advance.

Applications are processed by the team of the VV Foundation in collaboration with experts in the field or sub-discipline under which the application has been submitted.

 

PAiR residents

    Edith Dekyndt

    www.edithdekyndt.be

    Edith Dekyndt works with phenomena at the threshold of the visible and the invisible. Developing her approach out of a minimalist tradition, she hones in on singular, discrete movements, which are then isolated, magnified or repeated. A narrative builds around this close attention, which then takes the form of film, performance or installation. For Dekyndt, “each situation acts as the trigger for a process of “contexture”, providing an opportunity for both sensory and mental investment in an environment”.

    Her simple gestures, like her study of surface cast on paper through the minerals of the Dead Sea, the methodical cleaning of a monumental statue, or the silk canvas worn to fine threads by a cowboy’s whip, speak to the humble, the reverent, and the ritualistic. Balanced between the melancholic and the scientific, they redirect our focus to the subtle presences of everyday life and invite us to meditate on the slow process of transformation in the world around us.

    Edith Dekyndt has participated in following exhibitions: The Black, The White, The Blue, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Germany (2019); Viva Arte Viva, 57th edition of the Venice Biennial, Italy (2017); Play Time, Toledo Museum, Ohio, United-States (2015); The Importance of Being… Contemporary art from Belgium in Latin-America, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba (2015); Art Of Its Own Making, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Saint Louis, United-States (2014); Blue Times, Kunsthalle, Vienna (2014); More Light, 5th Moscow Biennial (2013); Agnosia, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2009).

    Edith Dekyndt, “Visitation Zone” for RIBOCA2

  • Edith Dekyndt
  • Dace Vīgante

    Dace Vīgante was Born in 1970. She dreamt of becoming a writer since childhood. In 2016 debuted in prose with collection of stories “Ledus apelsīns” (“Ice orange”). In 2018 Dace Vīgante published a collection of stories “Tad redzēs” (“We will see”).

    Currently working on her first novel.

  • Dace Vīgante
  • Vika Eksta

    www.vikaeksta.com/

    Vika Eksta is a visual artist and teacher based in Riga. She works in
    conceptual art using photography, archival research, video and performance.
    She holds a BA in Film Theory and a MA in Visual Communication from Latvian
    Academy of Art and has studied photography at Andrejs Grants’s studio, ISSP
    and EFTI in Madrid. She received the ADC Young Guns Award, FK magazine
    portfolio award and the Riga Photography Biennial Award for young Baltic
    photographers. Her work has been exhibited in Latvia and internationally
    since 2014.

  • Vika Eksta
  • Linda Boļšakova

    lindabolsakova.com

    Linda Boļšakova a multidisciplinary, research-based artist working in the
    fields of installation, performance, photography and creative writing. Her
    practice explores human relations with the environment and draws parallels
    between human embodiment and other material embodiments, especially those
    of plants. It aims to expose these connections and participate in
    developing a stronger sense of belonging to ecosystems and to the larger
    community of beings that mutually inhabit our planet.

    She has recently returned from Scotland where she graduated from
    Contemporary art practice and Philosophy course, prior to that graduating
    from photography course at Edinburgh College. Since, Linda has participated
    in various group shows and international conferences as well as residencies
    and summer schools. Currently, she is studying performance at Latvian
    Performance Art Centre.

  • Linda Boļšakova
  • Anastasia Sosunova

    www.anastasiasosunova.com/

    Anastasia Sosunova is a visual artist living in Vilnius. Sosunova
    has a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic art and a Master’s degree in Sculpture
    from the Vilnius Academy of Arts and has also participated in Rupert
    Alternative Education Program. She has participated in exhibitions in
    Europe and the US, exhibiting her work in both artistic institutions and
    non-institutional urban and natural locations. Her work translates between
    scales, manipulating personal stories and subtle material gestures,
    following through their entanglements in vaster tales. Anastasia uses
    video, installation, sculpture and graphic art to reflect on notions of the
    “alien” that occupy space in our everyday lives. Often this is a practice
    of noticing and knowing intimately our contexts, and the ways in which we
    interact with them.

    Anastasia’ s residency is partially supported by the Lithuanian Culture Council.

  • Anastasia Sosunova
  • Rana Öztürk

    As a scholar and a curator of exhibitions and events, Rana Öztürk is involved in both the historical/critical study of exhibitions and curating as a practice. She has completed her Ph.D. with her thesis Narratives of Global Modernity: International Contemporary Art Exhibitions as Places for Mapping Relational Geographies at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2015. She has also been a research scholar at the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) throughout her doctoral studies. She recently curated Carpe Noctem, a solo show by Aslı Narin at Milli Reassürans Art Gallery, Istanbul (2018). In her curatorial work, she is particularly interested in the notions of time and place and potentialities of their incorporation into curatorial and artistic practice. The historical and geographic terrains of particular locations have influenced the scopes of the past exhibitions she curated. These include We All Live on the Same Sea at Sirius Art Centre, Ireland (2014), Temporarily Shelved as part of the 3rd International Sinop Biennial in Turkey (2010) (co-curated with Vaari Claffey), and Slow Space Fast Pace as part of Cork Art Trail, Ireland (2007). She is currently working on an exhibition that will be a follow-up to Repetition & Cycle Talks and Performance Series I & II, which she organized with Sinem Dişli at SALT Galata, Istanbul in October 2017 and March 2018. Rana currently lives in İstanbul and works as an assistant professor at İstinye University.

  • Rana Öztürk
  • Jana Kukaine

    Jana Kukaine is a researcher, art critic and curator, who is interested in gender as critical analysis tool. Women’s rights activist and lecturer at the Art Academy of Latvia. Author of monography  “Daiļās mātes. Sieviete. Ķermenis. Subjektivitāte” (“Beautiful mothers. Woman. Body. Subjectivity” (Riga: Neputns, 2016).

  • Jana Kukaine
  • Joannie Baumgärtner and Clementine Edwards

    clementineedwards.com/

    Joannie Baumgärtner is an artist based in Berlin, Germany and holds an undergraduate degree in Sculpting, Fine Arts and Art Mediation. Their aesthetic practice is situated on the fringes of installation, sound-art, performance and poetry, whilst theoretical writing is used as both, a device for artistic research as well as an alternative space to articulate outcomes of artistic knowledge production. Within their work, human culture is understood as technological apparatus that constructs and situates normative subjectivity through methods of spatio-temporalisation. Formal constraint, identity and single-subject concepts are actively degenerated, letting a play of deviations argue for a solidarity that grows beyond normative boundaries.

    Clementine Edwards is an Australian artist based in Rotterdam, with a masters from the Dutch Art Institute (DAI). In 2019 she is artist-in-residence at Roodkapje, Rotterdam.
    Clementine is engaged with the idea of ‘material as kin’, which emerges from her research into the material traces of social experience. This thinking expands on her work around complicating the post-traumatic state. She is also working on a long-term research project titled World-making in Pain with Joannie Baumgärtner, and will focus on this project during the residency period at PAiR. Clementine’s studio practice looks like a large amount of precarious assemblages and sculptures, DIY films, peculiar jewellery, and intimate installations.

  • Joannie Baumgärtner and Clementine Edwards
  • Jacquelyn Davis

    Jacquelyn Davis is an art critic, independent curator, creative writer,
    editor and publisher based in Stockholm but working internationally
    (current focus: Scandinavia and the Baltics). She is the founder of two
    curatorial web platforms ‘valeveil’ and ‘The Lottery Project,’ and her
    critical writing has appeared in arts & culture publications such as
    Artforum, Frieze, Art Agenda, Art Review, Arterritory, Paletten and
    Kunstkritikk—among others. Davis’s creative writing has frequented journals
    and DIY publishing projects such as Reptilhjärnan, Fence Magazine, Drunken
    Boat, eohippus labs and [out of nothing]. Previous projects include curated
    exhibitions (public and online), events and texts for visual artists,
    organizations, institutions and spaces in Los Angeles, Stockholm, Vilnius,
    Riga—and elsewhere. She was the BICI arts writer fellow at Banff Centre for
    Arts and Creativity (2018), Bergen Kunsthall writer-in-residence (2019) and
    recipient of numerous awards.

  • Jacquelyn Davis
  • Vanessa Gravenor

    vanessagravenorblog.wordpress.com/

    Vanessa Gravenor is an artist and a writer living in Berlin, DE. Since 2016, she has been working on the topic of terrorism, the War on Terror, and proxy wars. Some exhibitions include Scan the Difference, VBKÖ, Vienna, AT (2019); Mutterzunge, Kino Babylon, Berlin, DE (2018); solo screening On the Biopolitical Image at the U-jazdowski Castle, AIR laboratory, Warsaw, PL (2016); and On Off Shore at the Museum of Photography, Berlin, DE (2016). Upcoming presentations include Up in Arms at Kunstraum Bethanien with nGbk, Berlin DE and at the Transregional Academy in Beirut, LB.

    She has published art criticism with ArtSlant, ArtMargins, n.paradoxa, Temporary Art Review, Chicago’s International Journal The Seen, Sleek Magazine, Bad at Sports, and Blok Magazine, among others.

  • Vanessa Gravenor
  • Evarts Melnalksnis

    Evarts Melnalksnis has studied theory and management of culture at Latvian Academy of Culture. He has acquired the profession of musical theatre dramaturge in Master studies at Hamburg University of Music & Theatre, while being awarded DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship. He has gained experience as dramaturgy and directing assistant in “brutWien” in Vienna, the Ruhrtriennale (“Alceste”, “Die Fremden”, director J. Simons), Stuttgart Opera (“The Queen of Spades”, director J. Wieler), and Berlin State Opera (“La Douce”, director A. Bergmann). He was awarded scholarship of young music theatre professionals program “Musiktheater heute” (2016 – 2018).

    As dramaturge he has worked on the production “Membra. Als ich im Sterben lag” with the music of D. Buxtehude and the first performance of “The Night of the Sea Urchins” in Hamburg State Opera, where he also participated as a singer. Founder of the theatre troupe KVADRIFRONS and dramaturge for the group performances  “Pavasaris” (“Spring”), “Brīnuma skartie” (“Wonderers”) and “Zvēri ir nemierīgi” (“The beasts are restless”) with the music of D. Shostakovich. Curator for the five exhibition cycle of KVADRIFRONS in Riga Circus elephant stables. He focuses on postdramatic theatre strategies, contemporary music theatre, interdisciplinary and international cooperation. Evarts Melnalksnis regularly publishes articles on contemporary theatre processes. He is guest editor of the topic “contemporary music theatre” in the magazine “Teātra Vēstnesis”.

  • Evarts Melnalksnis
  • Keiu Krikman

    www.keiukrikmann.com/

    Keiu Krikmann is a writer, curator and translator. Since 2013 she’s been running the project space Konstanet. From 2016–2018 she was the programme manager at the Estonian Academy of Arts’ Gallery. As a writer and translator Keiu mainly works with texts exploring art, design, architecture and occasionally fiction. She is also a board member and programme manager of the Tallinn Applied Art Triennial and guest lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

  • Keiu Krikman
  • Henriks Eliass Zēgners

    Henriks Eliass Zēgners is a poet, music reviewer and Chief Editor of the internet magazine “Satori”. His debut poem collection “elementi” was published in summer 2013. Translations of his poems have been published in periodicals in Great Britain, Russia and Lithuania. At the moment he is working on his second collection of poems.

  • Henriks Eliass Zēgners
  • Miķelis Putniņš

    Miķelis Putniņš (born 1991) joined the Latvian music community in 2016, when he published his first album called “Ogle” (“Coal”) together with his project band “Ezeri”. Since then Miķelis has participated in various projects as guitarist, song writer, arranger, and vocalist. He regularly performs together with Vladislavs Nastavševs; they have created a joint concert “Lēnās Dejas” (Slow dances); since 2018 he is also the accompanying guitarist in the band “Instrumenti” and has cooperated with Jānis Šipkēvics on several projects (Gaismas Raksti, Mīlestības Vārdā. 18+) as well as with many other musicians.

    In his music Miķelis is seeking beauty and euphony, as well as innovation and untamed musical solutions.

  • Miķelis Putniņš
  • Anna Salmane

    salmane.co.uk/

    “I am fascinated by the variable boundary between truth and fiction. The stories that tell of past events and that are told by eyewitnesses are sometimes embedded in subjectivity or even fiction. And vice versa – fictional stories can sometimes reveal situations, persons and essence of an event better than facts.  
    My works are often inspired by a certain actual event, which I interpret during the creative process in terms of shape and content or even interlace with seemingly unrelated facts. My purpose is to create works with emotional truth.”

    Anna Salmane mostly works with photography, transformed objects and installations.  Salmane has acquired Master of Philosophy at University of Latvia (2007) and Bachelor of Arts at Goldsmiths College, London (2014). Salmane participates in exhibitions since 2001, and she has had several personal exhibitions in Latvia and UK. In 2017 she received Purvītis Award for the work called „Dziesma” (“Song”) together with Krišs Salmanis and Kristaps Pētersons.

  • Anna Salmane