Riga Photography Biennial Next 2025 programme announced

The Riga Photography Biennial (RPB) was founded in 2015, and the Next 2025 programe will take place on its 10th anniversary. The biennial’s off-year programme name, Next, embodies the idea of movement. Next is a transition—never safe, predictable, or known in advance, it has a direct and irrevocable presence that constantly poses the question: is whatever comes next linked to what was before? Next provides a platform for emerging artists and curators who offer an original, contemporary vision and whose work encourages an exploration of the power of the image.

To highlight the role of the curator as a creative personality and mediator between artists, works of art, viewers, and society within contemporary cultural processes, RPB—Next, in collaboration with the Curatorial Studies of the Art Academy of Latvia, launched the Emerging Curator! award in 2021. For the first time in 2025, young curators from all Baltic States—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—were invited to apply for the award. This year’s prize went to the young curator Roberta Atraste (Latvia), whose exhibition The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems will be on view at the Art Academy of Latvia’s experimental exhibition hall Pilot from April 25 to June 6. Roberta turns to the bureaucratic and administrative processes involved in art and its aesthetics in a contemporary context. Participants: John Huntington (Sweden), Arta Kauliņa (Latvia), Sara Krøgholt Trier (Denmark), Katariin Mudist (Estonia), Evija Pintāne (Latvia).

The Seeking the Latest in Photography! award was first held in 2016 to encourage young artists from the Baltic States to reveal a conceptually deep, original view of their times in visually powerful works. Since 2019, the competition has been organised in cooperation with the ISSP Gallery. Ruudu Ula’s (Estonia), this year’s winner of the Seeking the Latest in Photography! award, solo exhibition Difficult Objects will be on view at the ISSP Gallery from April 26 to May 30. The jury member Kulla Laas (Estonia) said of her work: «Ruudu Ulas is very skilful in creating powerful photographic imagery with minimal elements and pure forms of display. Depicted scenes are frozen and isolated moments in time that have a quiet oddness to them and always leave something unseen. Her work has a strong cinematic quality, and each separate image raises an aspect of expectancy for the viewer.»

On April 25, at the opening night of the Seeking the Latest in Photography! exhibition at the ISSP Gallery the other finalists of the 2025 competition—Klaus Leo Richter (Lithuania), Riin Maide (Estonia), Keiu Maasik (Estonia), Gedvile Tamosiunaite (Lithuania), and Paula Punkstiņa (Latvia)—also will present their work. The competition also has long-standing partners who present their special prizes. On May 28, the ISSP Gallery will host the presentation of the prize of the Lithuanian book publisher NoRoutine Books—Triin Kerge’s book Scenes from a Lost Family Album. The winner of the VV Foundation award, Karlotta Lainväe (Estonia), received a 1000-euro cash prize and an opportunity to spend a month working at their residency PAiR in Pāvilosta, Latvia.

Several other exhibitions will also be launched as part of Next 2025. From May 9 to July 6, the Intro Hall of the Riga Contemporary Art Space will host the solo exhibition Chronosphere by Lesia Vasylchenko, an artist of Ukrainian origin currently based in Norway. The exhibition uncovers how war disrupts, ruptures, intersects with, and reshapes the temporal fabric of human and more-than-human existence, embedding itself in personal and collective time. Curators: Inga Brūvere (Latvia), Marie Sjøvold (Norway).

From May 16 to June 29, the group exhibition Neurons Desperately Seek Each Other will be on view at the Smilga culture space,, addressing the questions of where invisible yet present, accompanying, consequential thoughts arise and how the threads that permeate the mind are formed. Participants: Agate Tūna (Latvia), Luīze Nežberte (Latvia), Heikki Leis (Estonia), Kristaps Freimanis (Latvia). Curator and scenographer: Laima Daberte (Latvia). From May 31 to August 1, Vika Eksta’s solo exhibition Funeral in Sloboda at the gallery Alma will focus on the photographer’s mission to document as objectively as possible life as it is through an anthropological view of funeral rituals. Curator: Astrīda Riņķe (Latvia).

Like in recent years, the Riga Photography Biennial will also enter the urban environment. From June 9 to 22, artist Sheung Yiu (Hong Kong/Finland) will encourage people to think about human nature and destiny through their facial features with his outdoor project (Inter)Faces of Predictions, or How to Read a Face. In his visual study, Sheung Yiu uses his own face, employing new technologies to subject it to a variety of processes testing past traditions developed by the societies of the East and West. Curators: Inga Brūvere (Latvia), Marie Sjøvold (Norway).

The final exhibition of the Next 2025 programme— Pēteris Vīksna’s solo exhibition This Feels Familiar at Asni gallery— will be on view from June 20 to August 2. The exhibition is a story about urban space and its visual language. Over more than five years, the artist has built up an impressive photo archive, in which he studies the contrasting moods of Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Berlin, Paris, London, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and other cities. In Pēteris’s photographs, the urban environment serves as matter—basis for anthropological study. Curator: Auguste Petre (Latvia).

An educational programme is also an integral part of Next 2025, with lectures, discussions, and workshops further exploring the themes of the exhibitions and the role of the image in today’s world. A special edition publication of the programme will also be available at the exhibition and event venues, further expanding on the themes explored at the events. More information about the Next 2025 programme—on the Riga Photography Biennial website.