Photographer Māra Brašmane has been working in Latvian National Museum of Art for twenty years (1984-2004) and has experienced moving of collections, formation of the exposition of Soviet Latvia’s art and its later transfer to Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, renovation of White hall and opening of Hege’s hall. Each time a new art space was discovered.

At the beginning of last year, while Māra Brašmane got acquainted with the reconstruction plans of museum and its visualisations, visited the last exhibition and diligently explored the whole museum building, an idea of new, voluminous series of photographs devoted to museum was born. Its basic concept is to memorialize museum halls at the moment of removal of the most part of art collection, archive and office inventory when decoration layers of the museum walls are uncovered and the doors of rooms usually hidden to visitors and often to employees are opened.

Simultaneously with the fixation of museum halls and fragments of interior in photographs that sometimes discretely turns into game of pure colours, lines and chiaroscuro, answers to question, what happens one moment before a new beginning, are being searched for. What is being revealed when exhibits are removed and transferred? How the space changes when it’s occupied neither by collections nor people? What traces of time tell about the history of museum?

Curated by Šelda Puķīte (Latvia)
Organized by Latvian National Museum of Art