The closing program of RIXC Risk Change residency “MIGRATION + ECOLOGY” will take place on Wednesday, March 4 at 13:00 during the “Lunch Talk” series at the RIXC gallery, Lenču iela 2. It will include presentations by RIXC Risk Change residency artist Ezra Antonio Campelli (UK) and media artist Paula Vītola (LV).

From February 6 until March 4, Ezra Antonio Campelli is the residing artist in the RIXC Risk Change residency “MIGRATION + ECOLOGY” in RIga. Ezra Antonio Campelli, known also by pseudonyms Ezra Jude and Antonio P. Campelli, is an interdisciplinary artist based between the UK, the USA, and Italy, whose work engages with ecology, the Anthropocene and eco-feminism. The artist creates installations that raise the issue of the ecological crisis through an eco-feminism perspective, offering a variety of possible and fantastic solutions to ecological problems, for example, portraying pharmaceutical companies’ monopolization of access to hormones or water pollution that mirror the scenarios of a dystopian future. He explores the duality of man and nature, equating the sexes with the analogy of separating nature from culture.

During RIXC Risk Change residency, the artist Ezra Antonio Campelli was developing an artwork named “DIY HRT”. “DIY HRT” is a virtual and physical conservatory for plant-human hormones. The project comprises a selection of speculative flora which produce compounds that mimic testosterone and estrogen in humans. These plants have been hybridized and genetically modified to produce these compounds with greater potency. Intended as a means to democratize access to gender-assignment technologies, this research also observes these species’ methods of migration and histories of cultivation. Straddling the boundary between useful crops and mutant invasive species, these plants underscore the ways that an organism’s legal status is based on it’s apparent usefulness in a capitalist economy, and the ways that queer bodies (both plant and human) can defy and displace these narratives.

The second guest will be the new media artist Paula Vītola, who will introduce the artistic experiments and attempts (by using the principle of photoacoustics) that were carried out in her exhibition “Waves - Lights - Shadows” at RIXC Gallery. The artist in further detail will explain how these experiments were developed to understand seemingly self-evident phenomena - sound and light. After the presentation visitors will have a guided tour through the exhibition “Waves - Lights - Shadows” and will be introduced with experiments of the artist - sketches of the process, prototypes and tools for sound creation. Visitors will also have an opportunity to experiment and create sound themselves.

Paula Vitola is an artist and lecturer at the University of Liepaja, mainly working in the field of media art and art research, as well as recently focusing on sound art. In her creative work, the artist is experimenting with different technologies, natural and physical phenomena, trying to understand them, finding new means of expression and ways to deal with them.

RIXC “Lunch Talk” programme:

13.00 Artist Talk by RIXC Risk Change artist Ezra Antonio Campelli

13.30 Artist Talk by media artist Paula Vītola

14.00 Guided tour through the exhibition “Wawes - lights- shadows” by Paula Vītola

RIXC Lunch Talk programme - admission free. Please register by sending an email rixc@rixc.org, if you would like to attend.

Contacts: rixc@rixc.org, +371 67228478 (office), +371 26546776 (Rasa Smite)

Supported by the EU programme as the part of the project RISK Change, Riga City Council, State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia.