The 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA1), with the title Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, featured 104 artists and took place from 2 June until 28 October, 2018. During the biennial, 141 artworks - including 49 new commissions - were shown in seven different venues across Riga and one in Jurmala. The 1st Riga Biennial aimed to paint a political, personal and existential portrait of the unprecedented times we live in and to relate the tectonic shifts that are taking place in the public as well as private realm. Whether one defines the current era as the ‘Anthropocene’, the ‘Capitalocene’ or the ‘Chthulucene’, it is certain that we have entered an era of epochal shifts. This is at once both exciting and frightening. The artists in the 1st Riga Biennial were examining these changes and our attempts to cope with them, summoning ghosts from the future and recalling prophets from the past.

Chief curator: Katerina Gregos, associate curator: Solvej Ovesen, assistant curator: Ioli Tzanetaki, curators of public programme: Kolektīvs - Zane Zajančkauska & Ilze Kalnbērziņa-Praz.

Photos: Juris Rozenbergs, Andrejs Strokins, Vladimirs Svetlovs, Filips Šmits, Pēteris Vīksna

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