NEXT 2023 – Diāna Tamane’s solo exhbition “Half-Love”

On May 18 at 6 PM at the Latvian Museum of Photography, Diāna Tamane’s (LV) solo exhibition “Half-Love” will be opened in the frame of the Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2023 (RPB – NEXT 2023) program. The show will be available to visitors from May 19 until the end of the biennial’s program on July 23. On June 1 at 6 PM, a meeting with the artist and exhibition’s curator Evita Goze (LV) will take place.

Diāna Tamane’s work “Half-Love” follows her half-sister Elīna, her father’s daughter from his second marriage, growing up. These pictures were taken as they spent time together at their family home in Kursīši, where Diana visits every summer. The passage of time in the series is revealed both visually and metaphorically, as motifs repeat. The process of taking photos is an opportunity for Tamane to spend time with her younger half-sister, as well as a chance to re-enact her own childhood experiences against the background of a seemingly idyllic seaside village.

Similarly to Tamane’s previous work, “Half-Love” focuses on her family (especially the women of the family across several generations) and herself as an integral part of this unit, despite the fact that for many years since graduating high school, Tamane has chosen to live abroad – no closer than the neighbouring country of Estonia. This is probably due to the fact that by getting closer and going further away again, she can observe her family and dissect it with an almost typological approach. However, unlike Tamane’s previous works, in “Half-Love” she has abandoned the strict conceptual frameworks, combining sensitive portraits of her sister with improvised documentary images.

Diāna Tamane (1986, LV/EE) works between Tartu and Riga. Her works are based on personal stories that mostly take shape by collecting and assembling her own daily experiences, impressions, habits and memories, as well as those of her relatives. To carry out this anthropological activity, the artist mostly uses stills and video, documenting the protagonists of her stories as well as their living spaces. In several of her projects, she has also used vernacular photography, memorabilia or keepsakes as source material. The artists’ works transform family albums, documents and private correspondence into catalysts, making it possible to reveal not only touching autobiographical stories but also apt portrayals of society and recent history.

Tamane graduated from the Tartu Art College (BA), the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels (MA) and HISK post-academic residency programme in Ghent. In 2018 she received the Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2018 Award “Seeking the Latest in Photography!” Her works have been exhibited at Kyiv Biennial, the first Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), Tartu Art Museum, Estonian Contemporary Art Museum (Estonia), S.M.A.K Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgium), Winterthur Museum (Switzerland), Kathmandu Triennale (Nepal), Surplus Space (China) and elsewhere. In 2020, APE published Tamane’s first book, “Flower Smuggler”, which received the Recontres d’Arles Book Award and was shortlisted for the Paris-Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award.

Read more: www.rpbiennial.com

Partners and supporters: Riga Photography biennial, State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Nordic Culture Point Mobility funding, Rixwell Hotels, Valmiermuiža Brewery, Printing house “Adverts”, Arterritory.com, Echo Gone Wrong, Noba.ac, BLOK