Ieva Kraule-Kūna

Through installations and assemblages made from ceramics, stone, metal, fabrics and found objects, Ieva Kraule-Kūna explores the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union in the post-Soviet Baltics, Soviet architecture, the essence of an artistic act and fetishism. Her sculptural work is usually accompanied by absurdist short stories that follow the adventures of fictional characters, intertwined with distorted historical facts. Kraule-Kūna’s practice is informed by her experiences and memories of growing up in the 1990s Rīga, times defined by confusion, both economic, cultural and interpersonal. Relating that time to today, the artist makes observations about the state of the global art world and the impact of art-making on societies. With artist Elīna Vītola, Kraule-Kūna runs the Artist Crisis Centre, a space of comfort and solidarity that provides a shelter for unwanted art and a help call centre. Merging imagined absurdity with real-life individual and cultural trauma, Kraule-Kūna’s works are eloquent narrators of both fiction and fact, past and present.