IEVA ANSABERGA
07/2024, Hackney, London.
Ieva Ansaberga (IA) in Conversation with Artist and Curator Latifah Stranack (LS) in preparation for “The Universe Within” at Copeland Gallery in Peckham, London.
(LS) Thank you so much for inviting me to your beautiful studio. It's a pleasure to be here.
So thinking about the title of the show, “The Universe Within”, how do you respond to that?
(IA) It makes me think of the connection to nature and the connection to everything that has come before us particularly all the ancestors. I'm thinking of time.
(LS) We have a beautiful painting of yours behind. Can you tell me a little bit about this work?
(IA) This work is part of a series that I created recently and I'm continuing exploring the relationship between the body, history and sense of place.
I am drawing inspiration from the place I come from in Latvia. I grew up near the Baltic coast. In my memory, the place where I feel the most myself, away from all the social obligations, all the roles, the technology. For me, absorbing the colours, the smells, the textures of the place is my way of connecting with my inner world.
But more specifically, I like to use colour as a connection point between the space and my body. The experience of it rather than painting of a sunset or the sea, for example.
(LS) The feeling is embedded within the surface.
(IA) Yes, exactly. I'm trying to bring out the feeling of that experience. That is a contemplative feeling. The space is of contemplation and of dissolving, this feeling of dissolving, metaphorically, with the space. I think it's a space of freedom. I think the only way to reconnect with yourself is to be nature for extended period of time.
(LS) Especially after you become a mother, things change. And it's so important to have that identity that is separate to being the parent. I get the sense of the figure, but it's also morphing with the surface.
And can you tell me a little bit about your process? Like, how do you begin? What do you, how do you choose your materials?
(IA) Normally I would paint on a panel. Whether it's aluminium or in this case a wooden panel. I like to put the ground colour on first. I usually pour it and push it.
I want to have the feeling of the texture. It makes me excited. I need to have the excitement to start. And that's the process of laying the first layer of paint on. And it might change with time, but it sets the tone, it sets a feel of where I am and it often relates to a specific time in the day.
(LS) Ooh, okay. Because you get a sense of light in your work.
(IA) Yes, I hope so. I'm trying to describe the transition feeling, when the day either starts or ends, and eases into it. I think of the peace and quiet when there's a transition happening in the light.
And I want to have that feeling of the glow as well of the light always present. So that's the beginning. And then I do layers. I like to have textures, patterns inspired by the landscape itself, whether it's sand or a rock, or this doesn't need to be so directly related, it could be just a feeling of the texture or a pattern that subconsciously emerges as I work through it.
(LS) And did you always have sections of the body, because obviously you've got a hint of a face, but it's very loosely depicted. Was this very important to you?
(IA) Yes, I want the body to be present. Even though I like to zoom in depicting a certain part of a body rather than a whole figure. I like to have a sense that there is this presence of a woman.
(LS) Always a woman?
(IA) So far yes.
I guess because it's familiar. I'm working through my own experience, how I experience the world through my body.
(LS) So to form a self-portrait, would you say?
(IA) I don't think about it like self-portrait. I'm almost chasing a figure that is part of me, but not exactly me. It's sort of an ancient figure that I don't know yet how she looks but I could feel that there is a strength. I like figures to be grounded and to feel like they're almost monumental.
(LS) Colour palettes - obviously this is a bit warmer because of those rosy purple tones. But you've got other work that's quite monochromatic and cool.
(IA) Yes. For me, the colour, it's an interesting relationship, I think, that artists have with colour.
I almost see that as a partner in painting, that is emotional and can translate. Or reveal something that is quite personal. So the cool colours are coming from Latvia which is a Northern country. Most of the time you would see cooler colours in the landscape.
(LS) Also wind. I don't know why but I get a sense of wind and the movement because of the lines being slightly blurred and hinted at.
(IA) I’m glad you said wind because I love wind. I love being by the beach when it's very windy in winter. These are all elements that can help to transport me somewhere else away from the everyday, from the stimuli that is part of our daily lives. And I think we can't hear quite well ourselves most of the time. We need these moments when we are transported somewhere. So when I'm in a very windy beach, when I can't hear even my thoughts, something happens.
(LS) Power of nature, disconnecting from technology and the modern world.
(IA) Nature has the power to transport us. And empty us in a good way. That that is the feeling I want to bring out in my work and make it powerful and present.
(LS) I see this figure gets repeated in various forms. How do you feel it gets expressed when there's no face visible? Like in some of the works you might have a hand. Is that quite important for you just to have one anchored image representing the body?
(IA) I come back to these figures or certain poses or gestures as well. It’s like a rhythm, right? I go through something - I feel I must make at least three, four paintings of a similar figure to reinstate the presence and that feeling.
It's like coming back to our favourite beach or a place in the forest. You'll go to the same place, and you will sit down or lay down or take a walk. It's that kind of feeling. Returning is important. But they're never the same person. Every time you return, you've changed a little bit. So, the fluidity and feeling of movement is important in my work for that reason, because there's a constant change happening.
(LS) How do you go about deciding which colours go where, or is it just a process of experimentation?
(IA) I think it's a process of experimentation. Because in my work, the skin or the body is like a surface of impressions and emotions rather than the depiction of the skin itself. It's this idea we talked about the body as a boundary or a filter between the external internal.
It's more of a reflective surface, a porous surface as well. I think of marks that time makes on us and these invisible lines that are left. From experience generally, like living in this world, right? And we all have very rich experiences as we've go through them with pain and happiness we are carriers of the marks of time on us and events that have happened whether good or bad.
There's no such thing as perfection of smoothness; I tend to go in and work the surface intuitively.
(LS) I think you mentioned the poetry of colour. Could you speak a little bit more on that?
(IA) I think colour is like a poem, like a good poem. Colour is going to connect with you personally. Or not. I can't do much about how the colour is going to speak to the viewer, but I can do everything I can for the colour to speak about my experience or my vision.
It's almost like hard to grasp, right? But it can capture us in a feeling just like poems do.
(LS) Have you ever written a poem after making a painting or been inspired to make a painting from a poem?
(IA) Yes, I usually write short poems for almost each of the paintings.
(LS) And you mentioned collage as well, but obviously in your smaller experiments. How do you go about making the surface? Do you work from other images that you've done, or do you just get scraps of paper and work into them?
(IA) I create colourful, textured, small abstract paintings and then I cut them up and move them around. It's like a puzzle. It goes back to fragmentation - it is to do with us being, moving through life as some parts of us change much quicker, and some parts get neglected and then we come back to them.
(LS) Refinding yourself, that process.
(IA) Yes, especially through becoming parents. And other big life changes, we move some of the fragments back and forth. And then we reassemble them. In a way we are like a collage of time and experience, I think.
(LS) And also the traces from our ancestors, because you were a product of your DNA and all the people, the women and men that came before you.
Do you feel a strong link to your Latvian heritage and ancestry?
(IA) Yes. I do. I think it's impossible not to carry it within us. I lived in Latvia until I was 21 - my formative years were spent there. I feel very strong connection. And I always associate Latvian women, including my grandmother, mum and other women as very strong women because they had to go through a lot of turmoil and uncertainty during the occupation or war - and there were plenty in our history. Women were the ones who had to carry on - not only to raise children but always work as well.
So they're very hardworking. That's how I know women in my town, my mom's circle. I always think of these women as extraordinary very strong women.
(LS) It's almost like an ode to womanhood.
(IA) Yes.
(LS) The turmoils and the challenges and the joys of life. And this experience that we are gifted for however long.
(IA) Yes.
(LS) And I get the sense of also an afterlife. That this body might not be existing in this world. There's a sense of an otherworldliness about the characters or a spiritual dimension that they're existing in, which I think is quite interesting. Do you believe in, do you have any spiritual practices or believe in anything?
(IA) Perhaps through painting I'm trying to establish that. I'm very curious about the concepts of afterlife or different ways of understanding spirituality as well. So I think I'm exploring that recently, maybe in the last few years.
(LS) And a moment of hope, there's something about this figure, as they're looking to the future, there's an optimism or a hope for a new way of experiencing. I always try to tell myself, just, every day is a new day. So, it doesn't matter, obviously we've made a mistake the day before, You can always try again and always have to have that pursuit of I can be reborn.
(IA) I really believe in that. There is possibility of becoming better, transforming. There is always a possibility. In my work, the figures are looking forward and sometimes backwards to reflect upon and connect. They leave connections between history, past. The strong female figure that's coming and is going to become.
(LS) And very contemplative, because you get this idea of a thinking person. . It’s not just someone that is beautiful and has nothing to say. You really feel that they are exploring what it means to be human and this experience of life with its highs and lows.
I'm very grateful to have been able to chat with you. It has given me a better insight into the work.
(IA) Thank you so much for talking to me about my work. It was a pleasure.