AIR_BALTIC 5, 2017
Mikko Hintz och Inga Meldere, Portable Landscapes, Latvian National Museum of Art, 2018. Photo: Margarita Ogolceva
AIR_BALTIC Residency 5
For the AIR_BALTIC residency at the Baltic Art Center during summer 2017, artists Mikko Hintz (Finland) and Inga Meldere (Latvia), spent three weeks together on Gotland exploring and following the traces of Latvian-Swedish artist Laris Strunke, who fled to Gotland from Latvia with his family in 1944.
“After visiting Gotland, we felt drawn to its history and its preserved and present culture. We tried to follow Laris´ ”story”, visiting some of the places he and his family as well as many other Baltic refugees saw. We thought about frightened Baltic newcomers without a choice and unknown future and Swedes – as compassioned and welcoming but also without a choice.”
In August 2018, they will be presenting their research and their impressions in the Portable Landscapes exhibition at Körsbärsgården on Gotland. The exhibition will be based on moments, glimpses of facts, ideas and understanding and amongst other things presented by objects by Hintz and Meldere painted with handmade natural and mineral pigments resembling the flora and fauna of Gotland. The Portable Landscapes exhibition on Gotland constitutes a satellite to the big Portable Landscapes exhibition of Baltic exile art communities organized by the LCCA, that will be on view at the National Museum of Art in Riga in April-June this year.