We are happy to announce another group of artists to join Futures this year. The five artists were nominated by ISSP: Cloe Jancis, Ieva Baltaduonyte, Peters Jurgis, Reinis Hofmanis and Zane Priede.
They will join the platform’s activities to present their work to international professionals and to network, amongst other opportunities that will be developed for them, including exhibitions, publishing opportunities, portfolio reviews, and more.
Discover more about them:
Cloe Jancis
Cloe Jancis (b. 1992) is an artist working with photography, video, drawing and installation. In 2018, she graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a BA in photography, and is currently following an MA programme in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Jancis is fascinated by the social image and daily roles of women – and the related myths, expectations and feelings they evoke. In recent years, her work has focused on objects and rituals associated with performing femininity.
Ieva Baltaduonyte
Ieva Baltaduonyte is an emerging lens-based artist who lives and works in Lithuania. She is a graduate of the Photography BA programme at the Dublin Institute of Technology. Informed by her own experience of displacement, her work engages with issues relating to migratory culture. Transnational migration is perhaps the most highly contested issue across Europe – for new migrants, spatial and temporal displacement is potentially traumatic, resulting in shifting identities where home can no longer be understood as a fixed entity. Baltaduonyte is preoccupied with revealing personal and collective narratives where trauma, identity and memory encourage a deeper engagement with cross-cultural dialogue. By using photography as a means of personal expression, as well as to foster critical dialogue with contemporary society, Baltaduonyte invites viewers into topical debates. Her carefully foreground human experiences, exposing what is otherwise obscured or ignored.
Peters Jurgis
Peters Jurgis is a new media artist currently based in Riga, Latvia. He holds both a BSc in Digital Media Technology and an MSc in Cyber Security from the University of Birmingham, and an MA in Audiovisual Arts from the Art Academy of Latvia. His work comprises visual explorations into the impact of various phenomena caused by advances in technology. As such, a main focus of his work is Artificial Intelligence (AI) – both as a medium and on a conceptual basis. New developments in AI have sparked a series of heated debates, ranging from whether we can entrust critical tasks to AI, to conversations on the role of the human creator in an age of AI-generated content. With a background in machine learning algorithms, Jurgis believes that the future will bring AI and human co-creation – where algorithms are used to enhance a human artist’s capabilities. In his own practice, Jurgis applies new technologies as tools for visual storytelling, and as a means to speculate on future scenarios.
Reinis Hofmanis
Reinis Hofmanis (b. 1985) is a Riga-based artist and photographer. He studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover, Germany, and obtained an MA from the Visual Communication Department of the Art Academy of Latvia. His works are characterised by a socio-anthropological point of view – which manifests in an interest in typifying different groups of society, their behavioural pattern, and tier effect on the surrounding environment. Hofmanis won the main prize at Archifoto in 2012 and 2013, and was awarded 2nd place in the Architecture category of the Sony World Photography Awards. His works have been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times, Der Spiegel, Esquire, Bloomberg, Le Monde, The Globe and Mail, and The British Journal of Photography.
Zane Priede
Zane Priede, a self-taught still life photographer based in Riga, Latvia, has a background in design and a passion for photography. A graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Priede’s work creates imaginary and surreal scenes with everyday objects, infusing them with fantasy. Her deep fascination for architecture and design can be seen in her visual approach, which involves constructing scenes with small-scale objects. Her interest in science, biology, and psychology are also evident in her visual explorations, contributing a playful approach to storytelling, and discovering the fantastical in the mundane.