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Curator couple Šelda Puķīte (LV/EE) and Indrek Grigor (EE) will present their long-term, open-ended research project, Silver Girls, dedicated to uncovering the legacy of early women photographers from the Baltic states. Evolving organically through art festivals, exhibitions, and emerging collaborations, the project continually expands to incorporate newly discovered material. Launched with a clear mission—to shed light on the overlooked contributions of women to the history of Baltic photography—Silver Girls addresses a field still largely neglected in academic and curatorial discourse.
The curators will introduce the heritage of two silver girls the Latvian photographer Anna Kukk (1885–1960) and Marta Pļaviņa (1896–1959).
Anna Kukk began her career in Viljandi, Estonia, where she joined the studio of her sister's husband, Jaan Riet. What truly distinguishes her, however, is her journey to Zeya, a growing gold mining town in the far east of the Russian Empire. There, she opened a photo studio and created a remarkable photo series documenting the gold-washing process.
Marta Pļaviņa, a photographer based in Skrīveri, Latvia, left behind an extraordinary archive of nearly two thousand glass plate negatives, along with numerous paper prints. Her work is notable for its wide range of genres and subtle experimentalism, which occasionally casts an eerie tone over depictions of rural Latvian life in the early 20th century.
The Silver Girls project began with the exhibition (In)Visible Authors in 2020, curated by Šelda Puķīte in collaboration with the Latvian Museum of Photography for the Riga Photography Biennial programme. Its second phase took shape the same year, when Puķīte, together with curator Indrek Grigor, curated an exhibition at the Tartu Art Museum and published the album Silver Girls. Retouched History of Photography. This marked a significant historical milestone, as it was the first initiative to jointly present the work of early women photographers from Latvia and Estonia within a single curatorial and editorial framework.
To learn more about the Silver Girls project, visit: https://www.indrekgrigor.com/silvergirls_tartu2020/

"Rootless ground, forgetting flows" is an installation that combines a selection of artworks exploring the transformation of space and identity in the contemporary context, through a critical, poetic, and multi-format lens.
Through video installations, textile works, and layered projections, it weaves a fragmented narrative on memory, the dissolution of the natural world, and the effects of globalized time on everyday life.
Rootless ground, forgetting flows is thus a journey through transforming landscapes, where roots follow no rule and memory flows, even from beneath the surface.
Together, the works compose a visual poetics of disappearance, adaptation, and resistance, inviting the viewer to perceive the inhabited territory anew through a multi-rhythmic lens.

The architectural archetype of the unfinished concrete building can be found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape. Those structures, left in the middle of a discontinued building process in a seemingly never-ending pause, are signs of invisible financial and political forces defining the physical appearance of the city. With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future, as a frozen moment of time preserved ever since its volume reached that concrete state. The unfinished concrete skeletons of Athens are keepers of stories that are evidence of unseen structures that form the Greek society: family, bureaucracy, and finance. The work of Lalou & Aymo-Boot makes apparent how these ever-present factors continuously influence the everyday of the city and its inhabitants.
In 1871, Georgios Manolis Barbaresos signed his will, stipulating that his wife would inherit his mansion in the centre of Athens under the condition that she would not remarry. Otherwise, the village of Kastanitsa, the birthplace of Barbaresos, would become the owner of the building. The original mansion was demolished, and an unfinished concrete skeleton was constructed in its place. Using archival material, interviews, and film footage, the video unfolds the chronicle of 150 years of bureaucratic struggle originating in the will, tracing the connection between the unfinished concrete skeleton at the corner of Geraniou and Pireos Streets and the remote village in the mountains of Arcadia, along with the prejudices on women's identity in society from deep in time until nowadays.
The full story of ‘Barbaresou Legacy or The Cursed One’ is included as one of the chapters in the book '[UN]FINISHED - Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings - A Story of Hidden Antimonuments' by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, published 2023 by Jap Sam Books.

Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her work focuses on the politics of the viewer in the form of installations, performances, filmic documents and publications. She has presented her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings and lectures and published two monographs [theatro], Onomatopee - 2015 & the camera, Dolce Publications - 2019.
Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect with an independent design and research practice. He has realised a variety of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia, many of which are the result of collaborations with artists operating in the overlap between architecture and visual art. He is also a partner at the architectural office OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen.
Since 2012, Lalou & Aymo-Boot work together on [UN]FINISHED, their continuous research on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens. In 2020, they founded ‘cross section archive’ in Athens, a space for art & architecture, which they direct and curate with an annual thematic program of research, exhibitions and the publication Document.

"the Creative Home Residency program" is a collaboration between AllArtNow and Residence Botkyrka welcoming artists, curators, architects and critics who aim to experience a residency as a family and see what it can bring to their artistic research and work. It considers the challenges artists in a family setting face when trying to further their international networks and artistic careers. Therefore, it offers child-friendly accommodation where children, partners, or accompanying persons can join.

Optical Emotions crystallizes an essence of our present time. An experience unfolds wherein emotions are given tangible form within the artistic medium, inviting us to go through the intricate passages of our innermost being. These visual narratives implore us to take time for introspection to unearth the secrets of our emotional landscape that resonate profoundly within us at this very moment.
The idea of optical Emotions aligns with the concept of synaesthesia, where one sensory experience triggers another unrelated sensory experience. Assigning shapes or colours to emotions might help individuals express and understand their emotions more tangibly.
Encounter the mirrors reflecting the multiple facets of your existence and engage in a dialogue with yourself, for it is in the space between contemplation and perception that transformative insights blossom forth.

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