Dievs Daba DArbs
Exhibitions: - Kaunas photography gallery - Bratislava photo festival - Pingao photo festival - New Delhi photo festival - Bremen photo month - NEU NOW festival in Amsterdam - Riga Photography biennial
Texts about the project: Fotoroom.com , FK magazine
“Dievs Daba Darbs” (“God Nature Toil”) is a trilogy written by a Latvian female author Anna Brigadere in early 1900s as a quite sentimental examination of life of the Latvian peasants narrated by a young daughter of rural servants. For centuries Latvian families lived in the individual farmsteads in the countryside and notions of nature, work and religion determined their life. Eksta has re-evaluated and reframed the image of traditional lifestyle and it’s contemporary state characterized by migration, devastation, ageing of the population, emptiness etc. by re-enacting life of a country woman who passed away some years ago. Her children emigrated and house with all belongings turned into a strange archive of the private memories that was found by accident. By spending many hours alone in this forgotten house, Eksta has relived situations offered by the clothes and objects located there.
In 2018 artist has self-published a photo book (200 copies) that is a tribute to the albums that sister of her granny who lived in a house similar to the one in photographs was putting together and hiding under her bed. Photographs are mixed with the scans of visual documents and artefacts found in the house.
Read Colin Pantall's review of the book
This photo book was featured in THE EYES magazine issue “Matters of territories”, shortlisted for the Kassels Dummy Award in 2017 and was exhibited in several other photo book exhibitions like Self Publish Riga, Gazebook Sicily, Goteborg photo festival etc. To purchase your copy please contact the artist.
