Rita Broka’s solo exhibition “Where did you sit, mommy?” (September 30–October 30, 2022)

Various forms of artworks — textile objects, environmental photographs, installations, and collages — depict the landscapes of Ikšķile and Ogre, created using natural dyes and materials sourced from this region.

Undoubtedly, one of the exhibition’s narrative threads is the imagery created through the natural dyeing process, which emphasizes artist Rita Broka’s profound sense of place. By inhabiting a specific area day after day, moving along the same paths, she has become intertwined with both the visible and the intangible, becoming an integral part of this environment.

The ideological axis of Rita Broka’s personally significant territory is the Daugava River, with its flow evoking song lyrics, legends, fateful turns, and layers of urban and rural landscape fragments compressed on its captured banks. All of this forms the basis of associative images, depicting what is essential and worth contemplating for the artist.

Parallel to aspects of belonging and cultural identity, a theme emerges that, as events since late February clearly show, has no historical expiration. Here appears the continuation of the folk song hinted at in the exhibition’s title — a story of shared experience, in which one can also sense every woman’s concerns for her husband, sons, and ultimately her family amidst all this change. These are reflections on what has been lost and destroyed, on what was awaited but did not happen, on the readiness to accept the inevitable and endure, as it has sometimes been sung, read, and told, but never applied to oneself. This part of the exhibition reveals how current events are perceived through a new, unmediated prism of feelings.

According to the artist, naturally sourced fiber is a material most closely linked to human existence. It is timeless and still present. It contains life. As tough as a blade of grass growing through cobblestones.