Anda Lāce’s Making Love is Forbidden in the Psychiatric Hospital is an installation of paintings drawing attention to the lives of people living in closed institutions and to their need for physical intimacy and close relationships. The desire for touch, closeness, sexuality and love is a fundamental human need that does not disappear when someone enters institutional care. Its expression, however, becomes complicated by questions of care, safety, privacy and consent. These are experiences that can easily disappear from view when a person is seen primarily through the circumstances of their mental health and the institution in which they live.
Lāce approaches the subject as a painter and through her long-term personal experience of working with people in psychoneurological care. The paintings give presence to a group of people whose lives and relationships continue to be surrounded by considerable stigma. In developing the exhibition for TUR, Lāce also considers the history of the space itself. The building once housed and repaired emergency medical vehicles, connecting the exhibition to another understanding of care and to the old Latvian name for an ambulance, ātrā palīdzība, literally “fast help.” Lāce turns this around to consider what “slow help” might mean: assistance that is not late, but has the time and resources to respond to a person individually.
Twenty human-scale paintings occupy the space of TUR at different angles and distances from one another, like “very different people who have freely filled the space,” as Lāce describes them. Removed from the conventions of the wall, they are given space around them, while their positions are carefully determined and remain fixed throughout the exhibition. Visitors move around and between the paintings, encountering them from changing perspectives and in shifting relationships with one another. They share one open space, allowing proximity while offering little possibility for privacy. Each painting is held upright by a metal structure bolted to the concrete floor and cushioned by irregular foam forms that Lāce calls “amorphous supports.” Sponge and foam have appeared in her work since 2016 as absorbers, protective surfaces and safety mattresses; here they support and protect paintings that, despite this freedom within the space, remain firmly fixed in place.
The exhibition continues Lāce’s longstanding interest in human experience, vulnerability and the boundaries we construct around ourselves and others. Trained as a painter, she has expanded her practice into performance, installation and sculptural forms, often allowing these different approaches to overlap. Since 2019, her involvement with the socially engaged Sansusī Wellbeing Residency has included sustained work with people of different ages and a wide range of physical and mental abilities. Ambiguity and empathy recur throughout her work, alongside an interest in situations where established ideas of what is normal, acceptable or possible begin to shift. Born in Riga in 1982, Lāce graduated with a Master’s degree in Painting from the Art Academy of Latvia. She has exhibited since 2003 and has created performances, often in collaboration with contemporary classical composers, since 2010. Lāce currently lives in the Estonian countryside near Tartu, while continuing to work across Latvia and maintaining a studio in Riga.
Curator and text: Edd Schouten
Project Manager: Kristīne Ercika
Production Manager: Ada Ruszkiewicz
Technical support: Ansis Bergmanis
Graphic Design: Andris Kaļiņins
Mediation: Patrīcija Māra Vilsone and Laura Melbārde
The exhibition is supported by VKKF
About TUR
TUR is a space dedicated to contemporary art shaped through an ongoing exchange between artists, curators, and the space itself. Located within a large post-industrial building in Tallinas ielas kvartāls, TUR approaches exhibition-making as a process of dialogue with the site’s volume, acoustics, light, and changing atmosphere. Rather than functioning as a neutral container, the space actively informs the development of each exhibition.
TUR’s annual programme follows a seasonal rhythm: three solo exhibitions in winter, three in summer, and a collaborative Fall exhibition developed together with a partner art space from another European city. The programme places a strong emphasis on long-term collaboration with artists, often beginning months before an exhibition opens. Alongside exhibitions, TUR regularly organises artist talk-concerts, performances, and public events that create additional ways for audiences to engage with artistic practices. In April TUR’s artistic director Edd Schouten was awarded the Annual Art Award of Latvia as Curator of the Year for 2025.
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