mutable culture 2 latvia by zile liepins
occupation resignation dreams
nature desire
Migration: being forced to leave your home, within and beyond your country Riga apartments vacated after the dissolution of the USSR
When someone leaves a space, what traces are left in their absence? The photographs are of walls in vacated apartments in Riga, Latvia, which tenants were forced to leave following the privatization of the building after the fall of the USSR in 1991. The owner of this particular building is a man who emigrated from Latvia with his mother in 1944 as a small boy – first to a Displaced Person’s camp in Germany, then to London, England and finally to
Russian language newspaper used as wallpaper. CCCP is USSR in the Cyrillic alphabet. The power of positive thinking? This tenant transported himself to a better place through wallpaper.The apartment had many walls covered in idyllic landscapes, behind broken, smelly appliances. Toronto. Russia was once again advancing on Latvia, and having witnessed the horrors of the Russian deportations of 1941, they knew what was coming. His father, enlisted in the army, couldn’t leave Latvia and went on to survive two deportations to Siberia.
On Site review 24
7
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator