Art week in Valmiera starts new cultural tradition in Latvia
Students from Valmiera Secondary School No. 2 are also involved in the Art of the Year Award Week events; a 100-metre-long, large-scale environmental installation they created will be on display in the city centre, on the Dzirnavu Lake promenade. Visual arts teacher Natālija Primakova explains the concept behind this installation: "Our project is called '100 Metres Times 7,' and the children were given the task of using their emotions—how they feel, how they experience art—to create something unreal, something unusual. We ended up with a large-scale piece that represents art for today’s teenagers and captures their emotions."
The result of the work, as 11th-grade student Anna Vilemsone acknowledges, has now surprised even the young artists themselves: "At first, we didn’t fully grasp just how big this project was, but now, seeing what it’s turned into, it’s just wow!"
Other events this week, as Liene Jakobsone, head of the regional Culture Administration, explains, will take place in various locations in Valmiera and the region: "The events include exhibitions in Valmiera, as well as various open-house events in Strenči, Mazsalaca, and Rūjiena. These include lecture programs, various events, sketching walks, and interactive art walks through Valmiera’s urban landscape. We’ve sought to offer as diverse a range of ways to experience art as possible.”
One of the central events of this week will be the participatory discussion event "The Feast of Strangers." Liene Jakobsone reveals: "The closing event of Art Week is British historian Theodore Zeldin’s performative event, the participatory event The Feast of Strangers; a similar event took place at the Dailes Theater in 2019, specifically The Banquet of Strangers, and we realized that we wanted to invite Theodore Zeldin, who is now over 90 years old, to do it again. The concept behind this entire event is that you meet a stranger, you enter a room where you meet a person, sit across from someone you don’t know, and you are given an hour and a half to discuss things together."
This weekend, on April 18, the Latvian Art of the Year Awards ceremony itself will also take place at Jānis Daliņš Stadium.
The Latvian Art of the Year Award will be presented in ten categories, evaluating artistic processes throughout the year. Curator Kitija Vasiļjeva explains: "The Latvian Art Award of the Year reviews the entire sector as a whole; we look at all professionals involved in art-related activities—these include artists, curators, events, exhibitions, graphic designers, researchers, and writers—we look at the sector as a whole, demonstrating how broad and diverse it is. So there are nine categories, and the tenth is the Lifetime Achievement Award; the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award has been announced, it is art historian and curator Irēna Bužinska."
The Latvian Art of the Year Award will be a new tradition; the plan is for it to take place in a different Latvian region each year. "We hope that this week will also spark interest, that regions and municipalities will want to host the Latvian Art of the Year Award, and I very much hope that Daugavpils will respond next year; that is our top priority, where we would very much like to go, but we haven’t yet begun negotiations with them; however, I very much hope that Daugavpils could be the place where it takes place next year, as there is a very active visual arts scene there," says Kitija Vasiļjeva.