Extended Family, Paula Veidenbauma’s first solo exhibition, explores the spaces between arrival and departure, movement and disappearance, connection and escape, relying on celestial navigation when satellites lose their bearings.

In Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights (2007), the original Polish title Bieguni refers to wanderers associated with an Old Believer faith who reject settled life for constant movement, believing that as long as you keep moving, the devil cannot catch you. Flying comes closest to teleportation: time spent in the bellies of planes, crossing sunset apocalypses, flying over ever-growing economies and witnessing spectacular sunsets through the window somehow does not really count. It is strange to encounter parallel time across places that seem distant yet share the same coordinates. Yet upon emerging into the arrivals hall, it is time to look for a car again and decide on the next destination. The exhibition opens a teleportation portal between Riga and Belgrade, two cities increasingly submerged beneath waves of luxury real estate, using teleportation as a method of investigation.

(…)

The Departures Terminal (by Ieva Raudsepa)

It’s the last day on Earth and we are lying on a beige couch in the living room of the
model apartment No. 888
a framed stock photograph of a family with two kids hits the floor, someone mistakes
the plastic fruit in the fridge for real food and tries to take a bite: this is what being
robbed tastes like

The people inside the yacht parked outside
have bad taste and
are fat from having pumped themselves up with air;
their greed has made them almost weightless
almost above gravity
almost
only because some believe that
what is neither strictly necessary nor impossible
is still possible

Yes, the collapse of emptiness is a spectacle of a grandiose scale
and when the people
too heavy to disappear, unable to leave
gather their weight and drag themselves to the ATM
the ATM says:
I’m counting money
Forget what you want

But talking about dreams, there is
a kilogram of potatoes in a thin plastic bag and five packages of instant coffee
separated by the checkout divider from
three packages of pancakes filled with ground meat and a dried sausage
sliding down the conveyer belt;
it’s like looking at two sides of the same coin
and you pressing your face against the large window to watch
the super yacht LIFE SAGA take off at sunset –
the last bits of light hitting against fake gold
the luxury of bankruptcy
the act of leaving everyone else behind