Talk

iLiana Fokianaki will be discussing her curatorial work for the festival Survival Kit 13, an important event in the Baltics for which she was artistic director in 2022. The concept took its form of departure from the cultural imprint of the Soviet occupation of Latvia. The exhibition, titled “The little bird must be caught,” was inspired by the homonymous title of a poem by Latvian poet Ojārs Vācietis, known and loved in the country not only for his literary talent, but also for his courage in discussing the political conditions of his time. Vācietis’s work addressed the oppression of the Soviet regime, but also spoke about global social issues, from his native Latvia. The poem written during the latter period of the Soviet Union in the late ‘70s during Brezhnev’s rule, warns of the dangers of letting the little bird free to sing, hatch its eggs and continue being. It is an ironic allegory, in favour of free speech and against authoritarianism and repression. The poem reads urgent and timely, in a global reality where free speech and self-determination are threatened by far-right nationalism and authoritarianism. The exhibition, originally conceived in October 2021, had in 2022 a new mandate—given the war launched against the Ukrainian people by what Fokianaki terms the “narcissistic authoritarian statism” of Putin’s rule.

The Curatorial Roundtable, an international forum for curators and institutional leaders to discuss formative and current projects, is hosted by Steven Henry Madoff, founding chair of the MA Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.