The exhibition @SEA turns to a discrepancy that sometimes arises inthe perception when comparing the moods generated by marine landscapes in Latvian exhibition spaces with those coming to mind abroad.

While Latvian professional, traditional and popular culture has no shortage of literal depictions of the sea and various marine metaphors, there is a specific association that normally remains absent — the sea as the medium of colonisation and slave trade, the sea that, along with the brave and the boastful, the family and kolkhoz breadwinners, has swallowed several million of the innocent.

The exhibition @SEA does not regret the failure of colonial ambitions. Instead, it dreams of stepping below the deck and looking at the horizon from below. Taking marine landscapes by Latvian artists – not unlike those that grace the walls of resort museums in the summer season — it yearns to appropriate a perspective which has undeservedly been left unexplored in Latvian culture.

The exhibition is curated by Valts Miķelsons.