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28.02.25 — 29.03.25
“Horrify me, soothe me, horrify me”
@Anatomy muzeum, Riga
There was magic to each of these places. There was grief, unimaginable grief.
But in that grief, there was no shame. These were places to meet despair face to
face and say, “I see you. And I feel you strongly. But you do not demean me.”
Caitlin Doughty, “From Here to Eternity”.
how many touches a hand has given, received, and stopped giving
what kind of sounds has the shell of the ear gathered
what stories are told by countless knots and tangles weaved and renewed by an encapsulated nervous
system
how many times a breath, between fear and soothing, started and stopped in somebody's lungs
what has been created
The exhibition "Horrify me, soothe me, horrify me" by artist Laimdota Malle is a result of six
months' residency in the Anatomy Museum, where she created a visual conversation with its
collection, sparking thoughts about the living and the fragile as opposed to the departed, the
solidified and encapsulated matter. Also before, Laimdota Malle has worked on the themes of
memory and departure. In the exhibition "How to Move a Giant" (2019) and series of exhibitions
"OOZE" (2023), as well as other works, she uses techniques of tracing and impressions in thin,
translucent and fragile materials, to reflect on the ephemeral nature of human beings, their
departure and disappearance; our wish to hold them and the necessity to release. What is left -
the memories, bodies, souvenirs - seems to be subject to endless transformations, an eternal
reminder that is unable to replace what was lost.
In this exhibition, the artist continues to delve into the process of grief, but in this case the body
that is left after life has ended, acquires a new and independent existence. In the museum,
researching the body parts that have been reduced to objects and their functions, the artist asks:
how easy is it to distance oneself from elements that are unlike us, and how hard it is to separate
the visible from the person if the human traits remain.
In the new series of works, Laimdota Malle creates symbolic paraffin shells and impressions of
different bodies, balancing between movement and frozen time, a rhythmical repetition and
dissolution. These works are consciously oscillating between shapes of different lifeforms, since
the key to a fulfilled mourning can be found in the very inseparability of humans and nature. Her
work reflects on proto-Indo-European mythology where the cycles of the world and nature
revolves around goddesses of Spring and Dawn. The house of Dawn is full of colors, movement,
sounds, renewal and light, and it is also a place where transformation and release happened,
moving through mourning to healing.
The exhibition has been created together with curator and scenographer Aleksejs Beļeckis, sound
artist Sarma Gabrēna, and light artist Romāns Medvedevs; it is experienced as an installation of
sculptural objects, images, sounds and light: poetic research on the rites of being where
becoming, transformation and fading is a part of an endless cycle of a united ecosystem.
