A solo exhibition of sculptor Lienes Mackus is taking place at the Riga Porcelain Museum the beginning, which focuses on beans. The artist invites you to dive into her world, where art, family history and garden life intertwine. Liene Mackus plants bean seeds inherited from her grandmother every year in her garden, and it is a starting point for reflection on nature, its richness, life force and the cyclic nature of natural processes, on the place of man in this circle of life, kinship ties and roots, culture and traditions. “My range of topics has taken a loop like in animation over the course of ten years, and I’ve come back to exploring the garden, finding objects there to turn into poetic works,” says Liene Mackus, who created her first work in porcelain ten years ago Own rhythms for a group exhibition Hello, head! It was a story about a gardener who cuts a palm tree and a camel from leafy trees.
Was it your idea to exhibit The beginning to be placed in the showcases of the Riga Porcelain Museum for any passer-by to see?
I wanted more light. I perceive these three windows as altars for my beans and drawings, showing different stages of growth. I have been fascinated with beans for a long time. Over a year ago, curator Elita Anson created the exhibition Just don’t cry! Feminist views in Latvian art: 1965–2023, in which I took them more seriously. In that work, the personal aspect and interest in the shape of the bean combined with the theme of this exhibition. I wanted to show the pain and suffering associated with the reproductive system.
Why beans?
I like to grow this and that. In autumn, the beans look fantastic with their color and shape, each one slightly different. It was probably an intuition that I needed to work with this legume as a symbol.
Does the bean express something different each time in your work?
It’s about the same thing every time. For a start. About creativity. About growing up. About the fact that a vegetable or a giant tree can grow from a small seed, which cannot be compared to any sculpture. I used to wonder if I had created anything more impressive than an oak tree. It’s a miracle that I can’t help but marvel at.
Porcelain beans created by Lienes Mackus, which can be viewed in the exhibition Home in the showcases of the Riga Porcelain Museum. Photo – Guido Cajon
Exhibitions The beginning the description mentions that you inherited cardamom seeds from your grandmother. Could you elaborate on that?
All the women in our family are passionate about gardening, and it stuck with me. I am surrounded by people who grow things and are interested in the plants that we tend to exchange with. I have inherited the kind of knowledge that seems special to others, but to me it seems self-evident. For example, my grandmother taught me everything about tea – when to pick what, how to dry it. It is a giant intangible asset.
How is this legacy handed down?
It doesn’t happen that one generation ceremoniously passes the beans to the other. It happens organically that something remains – beans or hemp that sow themselves and grow in our garden every year. I see them as a legacy from previous generations. I would be sad if they didn’t grow next year. Knowledge transfer is often non-verbal. You look at what is being planted and how, and then you plant the potatoes yourself Marabella and save its seed until next spring.
When you plant, do you think about previous generations?
When I plant potatoes, I don’t think about nature, life force, cyclical processes, kinship ties, traditions and the like. I just realize at some point that it is happening and that I can reflect on it in my sculptures or drawings.
Do you have a garden?
My mom has a garden where I like to sow something and leave the rest to her because it’s hard to combine the regularity of gardening with sculpting.
Leave the weeding to mom?
It’s not as cruel as it sounds (laughs). The division of labor is harmonious.
Are you particularly proud of something you’ve managed to grow?
I like lavender. I generally like flowers more than vegetables. I have a hobby of bringing plants from abroad and planting them in my mother’s garden. I brought decorative garlic from Italy, which did not grow. I brought roses from Georgia, which will have to be brought inside immediately so as not to freeze. It is such an experiment and rejoicing that something is settling in Latvia.
Is it because of the memories?
I think it’s because of memories and feelings. This is most definitely for emotional rather than rational reasons.
Does gardening teach you anything as an artist and vice versa?
Gardening is a similar process to sculpting. It is physical work, delighting in the shape, color and smell of a flower or plant, which you want to put into the works. Gardening teaches patience and the fact that things can go wrong.
If you plant a potato today, you cannot dig it up tomorrow.
Already tomorrow I need to make rasola! Just like in gardening, in sculpture you never quite know what will come together and look like. When working with porcelain, I tried to make friends with this material and trust that it would turn out well, but I allowed myself to not know the result. Eventually, something can break. I’m not a potter. It’s all an experiment.
What attracted you to porcelain?
You can do things with it that other materials can’t. It can be made very thin and openwork.
Why do you need to work in different materials?
I could not work only in clay or only in stone. I think that the material is secondary, of course, as a student, you apply to glass, sculpture or any other department, but art is not about dividing materials. It is about choosing the most appropriate material to express a particular idea.
By studying in one department, you can polish the craft sides.
Yes, I am grateful to the sculpture department for the fact that we had the opportunity to hone shaping and other craft skills that are not learned in Western Europe to the same extent as here – you cannot create what you want, you can order someone else, but you cannot create it yourself. I appreciate our system, which should have more conceptual thinking and then it would be perfect.
Many supplement their knowledge by studying abroad.
With the arrival of new instructors, the Latvian Art Academy has created an environment that helps students to think more about an idea and at the same time not to give up the craft.
What binds you to teaching work?
For now, it’s interesting to me, because when you teach, you learn yourself. I teach figurative sculpting in clay. It makes me think again about human anatomy, muscles and bones. It’s a new horizon to jump into and think about, to create contemporary works through the exploration of the body.
Is this learning process more conscious than during the studies itself?
Definitely! I pay more attention to everything, because I have to share with others, with whom the exchange of various knowledge is formed.
Do you feel the generation gap? You represent the millennials.
Today’s young people are much more open-minded. They have no prejudices. They are not shy about asking questions. Our relationship with the lecturers was more respectful, but now the relationship with the students is more of an exchange of ideas, but people are different in all generations.
You yourself always return to nature in your artwork.
Yes, the motif of nature permeates all my works since my studies. It started with participation in the program Erasmus, when I drove behind and moved a little away from here. It was a valuable outside view.
where were you
I was in Palermo, Italy. I realized that I am interested in the local in various forms. Latvia has a certain magic that is worth exploring. I started driving around and photographing abandoned farmsteads, trying to capture the spirit of these places and put them into three-dimensional landscapes or objects. Nature is the key to my work. I have not created political or social works.
Driving around Latvia, you can’t help but think about political or social topics.
I wrote my master’s thesis at the Latvian Academy of Arts during the economic crisis, when people left the countryside. Of course, social issues entered my works, as well as feminist themes in the last exhibitions, but the first impulse is nature as such. At that time, I created one-meter-by-meter works with a forest, a meadow, and a pond, and I filmed how nothing was happening there. The light changes, a swimmer goes for a swim. Such a continuous daily loop.
As a documentarian.
As a poetic documentarian.
Why did you decide to study for a professional doctorate?
At one point you feel a little distant from everything. Get older. You are no longer the young talent. They leave you alone (laughs). Want to get back into academia and get back to the thinking process. It has to do with questions of formulation: how to talk about art. I would like to learn how to do it.
What exactly are you researching?
The title of my work is A diary of self-growth with plants. It will be a study of medicinal plants. I have to create an exhibition and write a theoretical paper, which I will be able to do after I have a clear vision of the subject through the search for form. I will analyze the points of contact with ecofeminism or other current theories.
From the beginning is art?
Yes, because the creative process can have various twists and turns that can take you in a different direction than you thought before.
Is there another exhibition coming up in the near future?
I have an exhibition planned in Cēsis. There will be drawings from the Georgia residency and brand new works.
I wanted to ask about residency in Georgia. From what I understand, it changed the direction of your work?
A year ago, I went to Georgia, where a month-long residency took place. It was an opportunity to jump out of my everyday life and jump into the creative process one hundred percent. This residence was in the middle of nowhere with no way to travel around. I realized that I can create works from anything. Such everyday aestheticization – you find something and make it an object of imagination.
Someone ready-made?
No, I thought I would continue my drawing series. I found walnuts and other seeds that had fallen to the ground and turned them into falling planets and comets in my pastels. Working with found objects gives me a sense of freedom, that I can take a handful of sand, study the grains and fantasize anything.
You do the same thing that your work did Own rhythms a hero who carves a palm tree and a camel from deciduous trees.
Yes, it’s all about the same thing. It is the story of a man who lives in a village and does not travel, but the human imagination is limitless. You can stay put and fantasize about palm trees and camels. It is a story about creativity and the cyclical nature of everyday life, where you find wonderful moments.
This work is accompanied by animation. Would you like to create an animation as a separate piece of art?
I stopped creating stop-motion animation because it requires a lot of technical knowledge and skills. I can’t handle it. I work with my sister to realize these ideas, but I’m more interested in form and sculpture than moving objects millimeter by millimeter.
Definitely the usual complications with lighting.
We didn’t have special lighting, so it jerked in the shot, if the neighbor turned on the hair dryer, it jerked even more (laughs). Everything happened at home. If you want to do it, you have to write projects and attract additional forces.
Maybe you can implement a cooperation project with professional animation masters who move the world you created.
Working with professional animators would be great! I have many such plasticine worlds in glass cubes at home.
In one of his last Instagram publications, you are seen on the back of your unicorn sculpture.
It is located in the children’s playground Labyrinth Doma Square. I created it together with an architect’s office White room. These are dream projects that don’t come around very often.
Because they are expensive?
It is rather a question not about the cost, but about the priorities of the municipality. We have little public art. Need a lot more! It is available to the public free of charge twenty-four hours a day. I regret that we are missing a whole period in public art, and this is due to the controlled uniformity of art during the Soviet era. There is mostly Soviet-era sculpture around, and now and then something new appears, but it is not enough.
Representatives of the Sculpture Quadrennial say they don’t feel welcome.
It would be nice if the objects in the urban environment remained after the festival. We have big gaps in this area also in education, we don’t see a lot of public art everyday, and that’s why people raise alarm when they see something “shocking” and incomprehensible.
LIENE MACKUS
Exhibition The beginning
in the Riga Porcelain Museum until 13.X
Source: www.diena.lv
