From October 10 to November 20, 2025, ISSP Gallery will host Italian artist Sara Palmieri’s ‘Between Memory, Place, and Matter’, a solo exhibition exploring the intersections of place, material, and collective experience. The opening of the exhibition and a guided tour with the artist will take place on October 9 at 6 PM at ISSP Gallery.
Rooted in research that began during her first residency at ISSP in 2019, the exhibition unfolds as a poetic investigation into how histories and identities are embedded in spaces and materials. Through experimental analogue processes and sculptural reinventions, Palmieri renders visible the latent histories embedded in buildings, surfaces, and territories – inviting visitors to reflect on the meanings of transmission of memory, belonging, identity, and loss.
At ISSP Riga, Palmieri presents her ongoing exploration across multiple geographies – Italy and abroad – transforming the gallery into a living archive. Traces of Riga’s own architectural landscape recur throughout the exhibition: the fluting of museum columns, remnants of demolished churches, decorative arches, and other fragments of memory re-emerge in transformed scales and contexts. In her work, matter itself becomes both witness and vessel of collective history.
Rather than reconstructing events, Palmieri opens a pathway into what remains hidden, imprinted in gestures, objects and surroundings, inviting visitors to chart their own route through the fragments she presents.
Sara Palmieri is a visual artist, curator and lecturer who lives and works in Rome. Trained as an architect at La Sapienza University, she later shifted her focus to photography as a primary tool for exploring the perception of time and memory, engaging with material, inhabited space, and exhibition space. Her work has been shown internationally at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Istanbul Biennial, PhMuseum Days, Matèria Gallery, and Fotohaus ParisBerlin, among others. It has been featured in The British Journal of Photography and Photoworks Annual. Her latest book, The Line of Water, was published by Witty Books in March 2025.
The exhibition is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, promoted by the Embassy of Italy in Riga, in collaboration with ISSP, Fonderia 20.9, MLAC, and Fotografia Città della Pieve.
Curator: Kamilla Kūna
Public programme of the exhibition:
On October 7, 4 PM, a youth workshop with Līva Veigura and Sara Palmieri;
On October 10, 6 PM, a public discussion on the memory of place.
All events will take place at the ISSP Gallery. Free entrance.
Address: ISSP Galerija, Marijas iela 13 k-3, Berga Bazārs, Rīga
Opening hours: Mon–Sat 12:00–18:00, Th 12:00–20:00
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