Looking Away. Women Artists in the Zuzāns Collection: 2000–2026

02.10.2026–17.01.2027

Looking Away. Women Artists in the Zuzāns Collection: 2000–2026 focuses on living artists and works produced during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, composing an idiosyncratic collective biography of the period. The exhibition brings together works by around forty women artists living in Latvia, across the Baltic region, and elsewhere in the world, most of them drawn from the Zuzāns Collection. The remarkable number of women artists inspired its premise represented in the collection, which encompasses more than 500 artists and works dating from the early twentieth century to the present.

In her essay ‘Looking Away – Participations in Visual Culture’ (2005), British visual culture theorist Irit Rogoff emphasised the importance of active spectatorship. She suggested that perhaps it is by looking away ‘from the objects of our supposed study […] that we have a potential for a rearticulation of the relations between makers, objects, and audiences.’* This led her to a crucial question: can looking away be understood not necessarily as an act of resistance, but as another way of participating in culture?

Twenty years later, Rogoff’s idea becomes the conceptual foundation of the exhibition and is developed further. Whereas Rogoff invited viewers to look away from the artwork, the exhibition invites the artists themselves to make a similar shift in perspective, turning their attention from the finished work to the conditions in which it was made. This idea is realised through individual conversations between the curators and every participating artist. These conversations become an integral part of the exhibition, providing previously missing context for the artworks while laying the groundwork for future research into the financial, personal, and creative environments in which they were made. The open-ended format allowed for a wide range of responses – often unexpected and at times deeply emotional – without forcing them into a predetermined narrative framework.

The context of these conversations carries over into the exhibition: each selected artwork is accompanied by contextual layers chosen by the artists, offering a deeper understanding of how it was made. These may include handwritten notes, a scent, a fragment of the studio wall, or a work by a friend – traces that acquire their meaning only when we are willing to look beyond the artwork itself.

Looking Away draws on Rogoff’s proposition that the role of an exhibition space is to create conditions in which artists can determine how they represent themselves. Their voices and experiences already exist; the exhibition helps make them heard and seen, allowing different forms of self-representation to emerge. The exhibition does not deliver a generalising thesis about women artists in twenty-first-century Latvia. It documents what happens when artists are invited to introduce the audience not only to their work, but also to part of the world in which it was made.

* Irit Rogoff, “Looking Away – Participations in Visual Culture,” in Gavin Butt (ed.), After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Blackwell, 2005, p. 119

According to statistics from the Latvian Society for the Blind, there are more than 12,000 people in Latvia who have been granted disability status due to partial or complete vision loss. Visual impairments significantly affect a person’s ability to perceive information and their surroundings, including the opportunity to experience visual arts. As part of the exhibition, Zuzeum Art Museum will implement an accessibility project aimed at enabling people with visual impairments to explore the exhibition’s artworks through touch and other accessibility solutions.

One of the project’s initiators Jevgēnija Estere Briede-Birone says:

‘Creating 3D models of artworks for blind and visually impaired people is an initiative aimed at promoting an inclusive cultural environment in Latvia and ensuring that people with visual impairments have the opportunity to experience visual art in an accessible way. The project began as a personal dedication to my visually impaired son, Mihael. As a mother, it is important to me that he and other people with visual impairments can not only hear about art, but also experience it themselves: feel it with their hands, explore its forms, materials and details.

I believe that accessibility begins with the willingness to recognise a problem and seek a solution. Together with Mihael, we want to encourage change in society and look for practical solutions that would help make Latvia’s cultural and public environment more accessible to people with various functional impairments.’

Artists: Anna Afanasjeva, Mathilde Albouy, Flēra Birmane, Anna Ceipe, Anna Egle, Mārīte Guščika, Helēna Heinrihsone, Ieva Iltnere, Rasa Jansone, Inese Kalniņa, Edīte Karlsone, Alise Kaska, Frančeska Kirke, Sandra Krastiņa, Kristīne Krauze-Slucka, Siji Krishnan, Anda Lāce, Kris Lemsalu, Agate Lielpētere, Kristīne Madjare, Sarmīte Māliņa (and Kristaps Kalns), Daria Meļņikova, Inga Meldere, Dzelde Mierkalne, Lauma Muižarāja, Katrīna Neiburga un Zane Zelmene, Aija Pole, Inta Ruka, Luīze Rukšāne, Līva Rutmane-Kalniņa, Elza Sīle, Skuja Braden, Anastasia Sosunova, Līga Spunde, Rasa Šulca, Evita Vasiļjeva, Solveiga Vasiļjeva, Laura Veļa, Sabīne Vernere, Ieva Viese-Vigula, Nele Zirnīte

Curator: Snejana Krasteva 
Co-curator: Jevgēnija Hamudajeva 
Exhibition designer: Daria Melnikova