Women’s Structures

The exhibition Sievietes būve (Women's Structures) by Inga Meldere and Elīna Vītola reflects on forms of knowledge that have historically been cultivated through shared practices of making, labour, and intergenerational exchange. Drawing inspiration from archaeological research, vernacular traditions, family histories, and everyday domestic practices, the artists consider how communities are sustained not only through visible acts of construction, but through the quieter processes of maintenance, repetition, and intergenerational transmission. Their point of departure is a reflection on a model of culture in which knowledge accumulates through shared experience, observation, and community. Historical references, ranging from prehistoric figurines and medieval church interiors to contemporary households, are approached as fragments rather than evidence. Inspired by the speculative methods of Marija Gimbutas, Meldere and Vītola assemble images, materials, and stories from different moments in time, allowing associations to emerge across centuries and opening new relationships beyond a linear chronology. The exhibition proposes history as something continually formed and reformed through acts of remembering, borrowing, and reinterpretation. In Women’s Structures, domestic objects, frescoes, layered paper collages, archaeological illustrations, children's drawings, and readymade elements become carriers of accumulated knowledge. Together they point towards the often invisible infrastructures that enable communities to endure. Like a drainage well that quietly supports the systems around it without demanding attention, the exhibition considers the forms of maintenance, continuity and shared labour that rarely become monuments yet remain fundamental to collective life. The exhibition is itself shaped through the kinds of relationships it reflects upon. Alongside the practices of Inga Meldere and Elīna Vītola, contributions from mothers, daughters and sisters become part of the installation, extending the exhibition beyond the boundaries of individual authorship. In doing so, Women's Structures proposes artistic practice as a process of building through exchange, inheritance, and collaboration, where knowledge is continually formed and sustained through the relationships that connect one generation to the next.