Performance "Katram savu mākslinieku!/Your Own Artist!" as a part of MA graduation work, Museum night, 13th of May, 2023, photos: Ieva Romaško
Katram savu mākslinieku! (Your Own Artist)
This work highlights the daily life of precarious work in the arts, culture and creative industries. Low pay for those in these sectors is combined with the harsh reality of funding competitions and a catastrophic lack of exhibition space, increasingly creating a sense in society that contemporary art is associated with a no-budget, slum aesthetic. The concept of this work is "zero-budget", which means that I only use what I already own or can borrow or ask to be donated. The work consists of a performance (documented video) and 4 handwritten canvases with the artist's manifesto. The performance was performed on Museum Night in a place where no museum can be found - it is currently "on paper" and waiting to be built - the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art. During the performance, I marked the outer border of the future museum and read my artist manifesto, in which I naively and humorously described the reality of the visual art scene in Latvia.