Ieva Raudsepa holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Latvia and is currently a MFA candidate at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, USA. Her work has been exhibited and featured internationally, with publications including i-D, YET, The Guardian, Wallpaper, It’s Nice That, and the Latvian Photography Yearbook. Her series “Cruise” was shown as part of the exhibition “MIXTAPE” curated by Aaron Schuman at Riga Photomonth 2016, while the book dummy was shortlisted for the Unseen Dummy Award in 2016. In Spring 2018 her work “Bloom” was part of “Post-Soviet Visions: image and identity in the new Eastern Europe”, a show curated by Anastasiia Fedorova and Ekow Eshun at the Calvert 22 Foundation, London.
Bloom
Photographs tend to depict places that don’t really exist. What we see in images changes, while the ideas we attach to them seem to be eternal – the young people in a hundred-year old photograph are no longer young, while they will always remain so in the picture.
“Bloom” is about the generation born right after the collapse of the Soviet Union in Latvia. The same age as the newly independent country, we have grown up with the legacy of the Soviet times we never experienced. Ideas of nationality and “homeland” – historically romanticised in imagery of people and landscape – are the source of both a deep affection, as well as an insoluble vexation, and have become especially troublesome within the current political climate. Carrying both the legacy of a complicated history, and the potential of the future, we have heard of a pastoral place – home -, that was promised to all of us at some point, but seems to be forever unattainable.
To view more of Ieva’s work please visit her website.