Maija Rudovska | Estonian Academy of Arts (original) (raw)
Maija Rudovska’s practice is shaped by independent curation, research, art criticism and pedagogy. She holds an MA degree in art history from The Art Academy of Latvia (2009) and has completed postgraduate studies in curating from Curatorlab at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm (2009/2010). She subsequently did three years PhD studies with a research about Soviet architecture that was not completed. Recently she re-entered PhD studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts with a thesis on curatorial discourse in 1980s – 1990s in Latvia.
She has worked extensively in the Baltic-Nordic region, as well as internationally curating exhibitions and projects at Manifesta parallel program in Marseille (FR), Futura Gallery (CZE), Foundation Ricard (FR), Bozar Centre for Fine Arts (BE), Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (LV), Moderna Museet (SE), Contemporary Art Centre (LT), The Living Art Museum (IS), Augusta Gallery (FI), ARS Project Space (EE), etc. Since 2011 she has been running the network platform Blind Carbon Copy that operates with network systems and collaborative models, between curators, artists and other practitioners across Baltic-Nordic region and beyond.
Rudovska has written for ArtForum, FlashArt, SelectionArts, Calvert, Guardian, Echo Gone Wrong among other printed or online magazines, as well as numerous books and exhibition catalogues. She has been at residencies across Europe and oversees. During the recent years Rudovska has engaged in teaching and mentoring younger generation of artists and curators at the art institutions in Latvia.
Phone: +37129507442
Address: Latvia
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Papers by Maija Rudovska
War on Monuments: Documenting the Debates over Russian and Soviet Heritage in Eastern and Central Europe. In Kunsttexte.de/ostblick, 2024
The article analyses a number of processes that have taken place in Latvia regarding Soviet monum... more The article analyses a number of processes that have taken place in Latvia regarding Soviet monuments since Russia launched a full-scale war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The Latvian government, in cooperation with several local organisations, has implemented a new law that has affected 70 monuments built either in the Soviet times or during the German occupation of Latvia during World War II. At the top of the list of monuments to be dismantled or demolished was the Victory Monument (1985), located in Victory Park in the Pārdaugava district of Riga. The article seeks to explore how these processes have been carried out and who have been involved in their implementation. It looks at the decision makers, as well as the context in which particular views were formed, by politicians, art experts or the society at large. Focusing on the controversies surrounding the monuments, the article specifically points out the politically charged decisions in the dismantling/demolition process, as well as the influence of the nationalistic discourse.
WunderKombināts I, 2022
What do curators do in Latvia? What is at the centre of their attention? What are their strategie... more What do curators do in Latvia? What is at the centre of their attention? What are their strategies, methods, convictions and styles? The question is complicated, because the history of curating in Latvia remains unwritten. This essays is an attempt to trace the path of the curatorial profession in Latvia, looking for correlations and links between people, events, processes and discourses, as well as establishing potential reference points, which could become part of the history of Latvian curating over the past three decades. Owing to the complexity of this unexplored subject and as yet unwritten history, in this article I concentrate on the period of the 1990s, yet at the same time I draw parallels with the later decades of the 21st century. The nineties are an important time in the making of local curators’ histories: it has considerably shaped the understanding of curator’s work and role on the Latvian art scene, and we continue to deal with this understanding to this day.
In this article, I use the tools of postcolonial theory in order to explain the processes of arch... more In this article, I use the tools of postcolonial theory in order to explain the processes of architecture and its understanding in the time of the Soviet occupation. Carried out under the influence of socialist ideology, architecture in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic became more artificial and deformed in comparison to the ‘original’ – the Soviet Russian example. Notions such as ‘our own’ architecture and the ‘other’ were present in architectural thinking. These features could be found in all three periods of architectural development in Soviet Latvia: during Stalinism (mid-1940s – mid-1950s), in the modernism revival (late 1950s – 1970s) and in the regional architecture that regained its prominence within a framework of postmodernism (1980s – early 1990s). This approach brings into focus a set of questions: how appropriate is it to apply the postcolonial theory to the studies of art history and architecture of the Soviet era; what features allow one to do so; how does postco...
War on Monuments: Documenting the Debates over Russian and Soviet Heritage in Eastern and Central Europe. In Kunsttexte.de/ostblick, 2024
The article analyses a number of processes that have taken place in Latvia regarding Soviet monum... more The article analyses a number of processes that have taken place in Latvia regarding Soviet monuments since Russia launched a full-scale war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The Latvian government, in cooperation with several local organisations, has implemented a new law that has affected 70 monuments built either in the Soviet times or during the German occupation of Latvia during World War II. At the top of the list of monuments to be dismantled or demolished was the Victory Monument (1985), located in Victory Park in the Pārdaugava district of Riga. The article seeks to explore how these processes have been carried out and who have been involved in their implementation. It looks at the decision makers, as well as the context in which particular views were formed, by politicians, art experts or the society at large. Focusing on the controversies surrounding the monuments, the article specifically points out the politically charged decisions in the dismantling/demolition process, as well as the influence of the nationalistic discourse.
WunderKombināts I, 2022
What do curators do in Latvia? What is at the centre of their attention? What are their strategie... more What do curators do in Latvia? What is at the centre of their attention? What are their strategies, methods, convictions and styles? The question is complicated, because the history of curating in Latvia remains unwritten. This essays is an attempt to trace the path of the curatorial profession in Latvia, looking for correlations and links between people, events, processes and discourses, as well as establishing potential reference points, which could become part of the history of Latvian curating over the past three decades. Owing to the complexity of this unexplored subject and as yet unwritten history, in this article I concentrate on the period of the 1990s, yet at the same time I draw parallels with the later decades of the 21st century. The nineties are an important time in the making of local curators’ histories: it has considerably shaped the understanding of curator’s work and role on the Latvian art scene, and we continue to deal with this understanding to this day.
In this article, I use the tools of postcolonial theory in order to explain the processes of arch... more In this article, I use the tools of postcolonial theory in order to explain the processes of architecture and its understanding in the time of the Soviet occupation. Carried out under the influence of socialist ideology, architecture in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic became more artificial and deformed in comparison to the ‘original’ – the Soviet Russian example. Notions such as ‘our own’ architecture and the ‘other’ were present in architectural thinking. These features could be found in all three periods of architectural development in Soviet Latvia: during Stalinism (mid-1940s – mid-1950s), in the modernism revival (late 1950s – 1970s) and in the regional architecture that regained its prominence within a framework of postmodernism (1980s – early 1990s). This approach brings into focus a set of questions: how appropriate is it to apply the postcolonial theory to the studies of art history and architecture of the Soviet era; what features allow one to do so; how does postco...