Faith to Believe – Or Not

Kim? Contemporary Art center, Rīga, Latvia

19.01.–25.02.2024.

Curated by Evita Goze

Sacral architecture offers moral guidance, a conversation about pain and hope. It channels, invites, inspires and confuses; it stands up tall and propagates its content in the social landscape, forcing us to think about personal guilt and the Supreme Being. It tempts us with mercy and eternity, physical and psychological refuge, which it promises only to those who are worthy. By joining a collective ritual, you get the opportunity to believe that you can become more agreeable to yourself or to something that is all-encompassing, that you can start separating good from evil, the desirable from the undesirable, and in reward will receive universal answers to the most important questions. Stories of the supernatural bring awe at both punishment, and the form, colour and gilding of the decorations. Here neither material nor words are spared on the path to salvation. Scare tactics manipulate and tame at the same time. How should collective belief in religion or its absence be seen today, after a period in which it did not o cially exist, while at the same time quietly unifying society, giving it shelter and refuge? How to interpret the fact that visual, spatial and sonic (or silent) elements can cause blissful delight, a tendency to marvel at the impressive space or the altar? Do we have our breath taken away by the aesthetic experience or the encounter with the divine?

Believe It – Or Not carefully considers the relationship between religion and aesthetics, at the same time analysing the artist’s neutral (ambiguous – neither yes nor no) position towards becoming a practising religious believer. The exhibition installation is built around a video made by combining fragments of collective and personal memories: Photographic documentation of the baroque interior of the Vārme Church, which burned down in 1971, reportedly after a lightning strike; and clips from Skrunda TV which show Annemarija singing in the choir and ensemble in the renovated Vārme church, as well as text from the book Esmu ateists. 25 atbildes uz jautājumu: “Kāpēc Jūs esat ateists” [I’m an Atheist. 25 Answers to the Question: “Why Are You an Atheist”] (Avots, Riga, 1982).

As the artist has analysed and memorised ever more images, the memory of the sacral building has become an emotional souvenir, and revisiting it calls to mind reflections about one’s choices and position.

Text by Annemarija Gulbe

watch video here

Contemporary Art Library