ARTIST STATEMENT

Since 2011 my work has involved the creation of conceptually based sociopolitical site specific temporary installations for indoor sites. In 2011 I began drawing with chalk onto blackboard surfaces inside of the gallery space. Hand drawings by chalk has now become a very prominent feature in my work and I continue to use the same blackboard colour (green) and medium (chalk) that I used in exhibition Kunst >Everyday nothing. “Artist Liena Bondare presents a big installation called Kunst >  Everyday Nothing (Art is bigger than the everyday nothing), an interactive, process-based work where the silkscreen printing technique is combined with ephemeral chalk drawings on 24 different size blackboards: a blown-up group multiple referents, from Leonardo da Vinci and his thoughts on time and the instant, to the artists Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp or Yukio Mishima in the idea of “art and life”. The title refers to a mathematical formula and takes us back to our school times with an invitation to intervene with chalks on the blackboards. She encourages us to reflect upon the meaning of art, its relation to life, the market and History, in addition to questioning the idea of authorship, original and copy.” Anne Heyvaert

In my work, I deconstruct the routine of everyday life (instead of art), mathematical formulas, education system and cultural icons. Fragility of chalk and fact that each spectator can leave a comment or destroy artwork and after the exhibition all blackboards will be covered by wall paint is important aspect for me. My work also addresses to themes and aesthetic categories that is common in Post Soviet area (work Chernobyl - Disneyland). I am using quotations from literature, philosophy, psychology, art history and internet to wed minimal form with maximal content.

BIOGRAPHY

LI BOND (Liena Bondare) was born in Alūksne, Latvia in 1980. To date, Liena has had 14 solo exhibitions, including solo shows at Mainsite Contempoary Norman, Oklahoma, USA, City Gallery Šiauliai LT, National Art Museum of Latvia Art hall Arsenāls, Riga Art Space INTRO Hall in Latvia and Kulturspiecher Dorenthe in Germany. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects in Latvia and abroad (60 till today): Kaunas Printmaking biennial, Guanlan Printmaking biennial, shows at KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn, Novas Gallery in London (UK), Horst Janssen Museum in Oldenburg (Germany) Contemporary Art Gallery in Opole (Poland) and MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (Poland). She had few artist residencies, including YAC, Tianjin (2019) and Guanlan Printmaking Base, Shenzhen (2018), China, France Masserel Center, Belgium (2007), Kloster Bentlage, Rhein, Germany (2007).

Liena Bondare has been the curator of 15 exhibitions in Latvia and abroad and was one of the organizers and the main curator of Latvian part “Et nuit illumina la nuit” of the exhibition “EXPOSITION D’ART CONTEMPORAIN BALTE” in Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France (2008) and contemporary printmaking exhibition “Power and man” in Novas Gallery, London, UK (2006). 

Her works can be found in the collections of China Printmaking Museum (China), Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), Art Museum Cluj-Napoca, the Latvian National Museum of Art and Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center (Latvia).

Since 2005 till 2022, Bondare has taught drawing at the Riga School of Design and Art, on 2020 was Guest Lecturer at Vilnius Art Academy Kaunas Printmaking department and from 2006 – 2009 she was a lecturer in silkscreen at the Art Academy of Latvia.