Opening Program for the Riga Photography Biennial 2026

Next week, the Riga Photography Biennial 2026 will open with several exhibitions. On April 16 at 18:00, two exhibitions will open at the Riga Contemporary Art Space exhibition hall: the group exhibition ‘Zoom In: Ecology’ and Priyageetha Dia’s solo exhibition ‘everything you need to see is already in front of you’. On April 17 at 18:00, the opening of the exhibition ‘A Vocabulary for Ghosts’ will take place at the ASNI gallery, while on April 18 at 14:00, Māra Brašmane’s solo exhibition ‘My Friends’ will welcome its first visitors at the ALMA gallery.

The first Riga Photography Biennial (RPB) took place in 2016. This year, the RPB marks a decade-long journey thematically examining the phenomenon of self-existence / coexistence in various possible contexts, including the impact of technology on human nature, the relationship between man and nature, as well as the informative code of the contemporary image. From April 17 to June 14, the main event of RPB 2026—the exhibition ‘Zoom In: Ecology’—will take place in the Main Gallery of the Riga Contemporary Art Space. Of all the important questions that occupy human minds, one is eternal: how to survive? It’s a question that can turn in an instant from a seemingly prosaic problem with a rational solution into a universal riddle to which there is no answer. Just like there is no solution to the currently acute contradiction between the human desire to control and exploit natural systems and our negligible knowledge about them – no one can fully explain the workings of ecosystems or what determines biological diversity on Earth. The exhibition ‘Zoom In: Ecology’ presents nine reflections on human merging with digital technologies and/or nature. It investigates how digital activities influence ecosystems, natural resources and human nature, attempting to navigate through this finely crafted web of relationships. Curators: Inga Brūvere (LV), Marie Sjøvold (NO). Participants: Astrid Ardagh (NO), Nanna Debois Buhl (DK), Henna-Riikka Halonen (FI), Inka & Niclas (SE), Kristina Õllek & Kert Viiart-Õllek (EE), Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits (LV), Sabīne Šnē (LV), Istvan Virag (HU/NO)

In exhibition ‘everything you need to see is already in front of you’ Priyageetha Dia (NL) questions photography as a medium – repository of memories. Her perspective is rooted in the history of her family in South-East Asia, in the Malay peninsula, which in its heyday was considered to be the most profitable colony in the British Empire. During the Industrial Revolution in the 1870s, rubber manufacturing developed rapidly. The natural caoutchouc resources in South America were no longer able to satisfy the growing pace of production, and therefore the British government decided to artificially create new resources in the colonies of the Far East. Collected in Brazil, the seeds and seedlings of the hevea grew into huge rubber plantations on the other side of the world, where several generations of indentured labourers spent their lives, becoming cheap labour for the British rubber industry. Working with archives and conducting field research in rubber plantations, Priyageetha Dia approaches the past from different sides and strives to see and hear it’s invisible and inaudible connections. At the same time, the artist joins the historical discussion about the mystical, ghostly character of the photographic medium, which transforms reality into a trace, keeping visual records of personages, places and events on photographic plates, paper or in digital files. The exhibition will be on view in the Gallery Space of the Riga Contemporary Art Space from April 17 to June 7. Curator: Inga Brūvere.

To exist is always to exist alongside others – people, systems, memories and presences that remain partially unseen. The exhibition ‘A Vocabulary for Ghosts’, which will be on view at the ASNI Gallery from April 18 to May 20, proposes that co-existence is not only a social or political condition, but also a form of cohabiting with ghosts: invisible forces, archived and unarchived memories, and quiet presences that inhabit the periphery of our attention. The exhibition brings together three artistic practices, each illuminating a different dimension of the “ghostly” in contemporary life. Saskia Fischer (DE) explores ecological and emotional margins, using film to articulate forms of caretaking that unfold outside dominant narratives. Ona Barbora Šlapšinskaitė (LT) exposes the residues of bureaucratic systems through redacted call-centre notes and experimental sculptural forms – objects that register both erasure and preservation, functioning as delicate material traces of invisible labour. Tom Lovelace (UK) works with photograms and performative interventions to foreground the instability of presence, gesture and attention, activating the exhibition space as a site where images emerge, fade and are re-encountered. Together, their practices propose co-existence as an ongoing negotiation with what remains obscured, fragile or only partially legible. Curator: Paulius Petraitis (LT).

At the ALMA gallery, from April 19 to May 31, will be on display Māra Brašmane’s solo exhibition ‘My Friends’, which brings together Māra Brašmane’s first photographs, shot between 1965 and 1969 with her father's large format Woigtländer camera. Māra Brašmane wanted to document life as it was, Riga through the eyes of a young person, contrary to the demands of Soviet ideology. Biographical notes often mention that Māra Brašmane has been making photographs since 1969, when she joined Riga Photo Club. The reason for this is because the photographs in the exhibition ‘My Friends’ were seen simply as studies, first attempts on the path towards freezing the world in time. She did not intend these photographs for exhibition. This is where the power of these works lies – they were not taken with a trace of obligation towards a specific project, they were not intended for the eyes of others, the motivation for their creation was not thirst for recognition, artistic ambition or a commission from an institution. Māra Brašmane simply photographed what she found important and interesting, keeping it as her own personal memory archive of the sensations and experience possible only in that specific time and place. Curator: Kristians Fukss (LV).

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, exhibition hall Riga Contemporary Art Space, Gallery ALMA, Gallery ASNI, Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia, Estonian Embassy in Riga, Embassy of Finland in Riga, Rixwell Hotels, printing house Adverts, Artglass by Groglass, Riga Art Week (RAW), Arterritory.com, Echo Gone Wrong, NOBA