The Chekhov Theatre Gallery will host the closing exhibition of the Riga Photography Biennial 2026—Ieva Epnere’s solo exhibition Tuesday

On June 9 at 13:00, the opening of artist Ieva Epnere’s solo exhibition Tuesday will take place at the Chekhov Theatre Gallery. The exhibition is part of the Riga Photography Biennial (RPB) 2026 program, and the curator is Roberta Atraste, winner of the Emerging Curator! Award in the RPB – NEXT 2025 competition. The exhibition will be on view until September 27.

In the exhibition Tuesday, artist Ieva Epnere turns her attention to herself and her observations of the cyclical nature of life. Over the course of multiple months, the artist spent every Tuesday visiting her father's apartment in Liepāja to stay in dialogue with memory via the space, light, and objects present. This regular recurrence became a rhythm – one that maintains a connection with the departed whose presence was still engrained in the atmosphere of the space. In the artwork, the apartment functions as a psychological scenography and a living archive. The wallpapers, the faux leather once purchased for upholstering doors, the textiles and household items become witnesses and vehicles of memory. The artist does not document these objects – she “activates” them, creating situations where personal memory meets performative action.

Daylight has a crucial role in the photographs – it creates a dream- or memory-like effect. By using a long-exposure technique, the artist’s moving body becomes almost spectral in layers of light. This ghostliness and transparency reveal the passing of time – the human figure merges with the interior, thus becoming a part of the memory’s mechanism. Simultaneously, the figure in the frame is not a model, but rather a character reflecting on itself.

The name of the exhibition – Tuesday – initially represents the regularity of the works’ creation, but steadily it takes on a broader meaning. In this exhibition, photography becomes a way to keep something present even after a loss.

Ieva Epnere (LV) graduated from the Textile Department (2001) and the Visual Communication Department (2003) at the Art Academy of Latvia and completed postgraduate studies at HISK Ghent (2012). Ieva Epnere's artistic practice revolves around exploring themes of identity, memory and history. She works with a variety of mediums including video, photography, and textile and installation art, often incorporating personal and collective narratives to create a deep and introspective experience for the viewer. Epnere's distinctive stylistic approach involves a blend of documentary storytelling and visual poetry, and a keen eye for capturing the essence of her subjects within the context of broader societal and historical landscapes. In 2019, she received the Purvītis Prize for her work Sea of Living Memories. In 2019, Epnere was awarded a one-year German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Artists-in-Berlin programme scholarship to work in Berlin. During her residency in DAAD her book Riga Circus was published by an independent publishing house BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE (Berlin). In 2025, she received a nomination for the film Laidi at the Lielais Kristaps Latvian National Film Awards in the category "Best Short Documentary".

The Riga Photography Biennial is an international contemporary art event, focusing on the analysis of visual culture and artistic representation. The term ‘photography’ in the title of the biennial is used as an all-embracing concept encompassing a mixed range of artistic image-making practices that have continued to transform the lexicon of contemporary art in the 21st century. The biennial covers issues ranging from cultural theory to current socio-political processes in the Baltics and the wider European region. Using the format of an art festival, Riga Photography Biennial attempts to record changes taking place all over the world and invites us to collectively interpret them – something we not only need to see but also imagine whilst translating the complicated and oversaturated contemporary visual language into meaningful relationships between our daily reality, the camera lens, historic material, contemporary art, technologies and the future. How has our understanding of photography and image changed because of digital technologies, and how does it manifest itself in the work of art? For the organisers of the biennial these are important questions to present and analyse, whilst at the same time introducing Latvian audiences to leading works of international art as well as the ideas of prominent art theoreticians presented in the form of symposiums, discussions and publications in parallel with exhibitions and performances.

RPB 2026 will take place from April 16 to July 3, featuring an extensive exhibition and educational program. For more information: www.rpbiennial.com.

Supporters and partners: State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Chekhov Theatre Gallery, Hibnerstudio, printing house Adverts, Riga Art Week (RAW), Arterritory.com, Echo Gone Wrong, NOBA