I Don't Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ

In the exhibition "I Don't Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ," Vienna-based artist/photographer/darkroom technician Sophie Thun and archivist Liga Goldberga engage with the archive of artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (or ZDZ, 1944-2011) to produce new work. The exhibition is curated by Zane Onckule and supported by Phileas Projects and State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia.

The exhibition is open from July 15 to September 12, 2021 at the Kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga, Latvia. It is a work in progress, as the artist and archivist work in the gallery until the closing day.

Read more about the ideas behind the exhibition in the essay by curator Zane Onckule on Kim? website.

Press about the exhibition

Contemporary Art Library (August 30, 2021): view online

Arterritory (August 26, 2021): view online or download pdf

Echo Gone Wrong (August 25, 2021): view online

Kultūras Diena (August 19, 2021): download pdf

FK Magazine (July 27, 2021): view online or download pdf

Exhibition wall text and press release

Wall text (in English and Latvian): download pdf

Press release (in English): download pdf

Zane Onckule, the curator of the exhibition, writes:

“I Don’t Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ is both exhibition and performative act—sign of a kinship that exposes the hidden, the unknown and the unconscious. Focused on the work of Zenta Dzividzinska, a fearless, marginalized, and system-defying artist whose work, in the course of her lifetime, was written off as not particularly valuable, the exhibition uncovers her neglected oeuvre. Simultaneously, the exhibition is contemporary artist Sophie Thun’s tribute to the preceding generation of women artist(s) that affirms their legacy and shows continuity in their efforts to create, exhibit and be respected within changing, but still constraining, hierarchies.

Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011), or ZDZ, was one of the most interesting and creative young artists in Riga in the 1960s. However, she had to wait for more than 30 years before she could have her first solo exhibition. Photography was a critical means of self-expression for her; by experimenting with its specifically indexical attributes—framing, angles, movement—Dzividzinska began a practice of documenting everyday life. Her works are characterised by a strong graphic conditionality, particularly with regard to the experimentation with composition and tonality, as well as the use of original techniques for choosing subjects and motifs that were radically unconventional for Latvian photography at the time. Instead of garnering recognition and respect, however, Dzividzinska’s radical work was met with disdain. Her peers, largely consisting of heterosexual male spectators, considered her work unprofessional. In the face of expectations of women at the time, her “norm-correcting” (Šteimane, 1999) portrayal of women, and her subversive proto-selfies, were viewed as “ugly”. Dzividzinska’s work wasn’t even appreciated by her family, who deemed her a “failed” artist.

The exhibition’s title, I Don’t Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ, is a combination of the title of Dzividzinska’s second solo exhibition I Don’t Remember a Thing (Latvian Artists Union gallery, Riga, 2005) with the title of an article by art historian Alise Tīfentāle (“Entering the Elusive Estate of photographer Zenta Dzividzinska”, MoMA Post, March 2021), which explored the artist’s work and legacy. The abbreviation “ZDZ” in a reference to the artist’s preferred signature, which came about from her frustration at people’s inability to pronounce her Polish sounding surname.

Most of Dzividzinska’s photographs were not printed during her lifetime, or had limited exhibitionary prospects given the traditional narrative and aesthetic criteria that museums and photography clubs of the 1960s abided by. Cultural institutions deemed her approach to work as too ethically concerned, “diametrically opposed” (Svede, 2004) to the principles of the Soviet system. In recent years, however, museums and private collections locally and internationally have started acquiring small collections of Dzividzinska’s photographs. Most of her work (including photographs, negatives, contact prints, notes and un-systematised and unreviewed documents) was held in temporary storage in an industrial area in Riga until this exhibition.

Guided by the aforementioned, I Don’t Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ is conceived as an experimental contribution to preserve and interpret the legacy of Dzividzinska’s para-feminist art practice. The exhibition centres on a dialogue between Austrian artist Sophie Thun (b. 1985) and Dzividzinska in the only way possible–through archival practice. During the course of the exhibition, Thun, an experienced photo lab technician who works in a similar intellectual and emotional register as Dzividzinska, will live in Riga and work in a black-and-white photography laboratory installed in one of the exhibition rooms. Together with an archivist specially assigned to the project, the artist will access, review and print the still vaguely known material from Dzividzinska’s archive.

I Don’t Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ includes photographs by Thun and Dzividzinska from museums and private collections, as well as a series of new works by Thun—among them, a full-scale trompe l’oeil color recreation of the exhibition venue and photograms with Dzividzinska’s work checklist, a scene of production of a functioning black-and-white photography lab, and an improvised work desk for the archivist. Finally, a growing display of prints by Thun will be produced out of Dzividzinska’s negatives.

At the end of the exhibition on 12 September, which would have been Dzividzinska’s 77th birthday, the archive will return to the warehouse. Stored in a new state of order, the material aims to attract well-equipped future researchers and scholars to engage and expand on the work that was begun during I Don’t Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ. Thun, who shares a reality of the “optional” nature of the artistic practice with Dzividzinska, will produce her own works in-between or during “after hours” of the exhibition to then bring them to her studio and reveal to a new public in other occasions.”

Download a full exhibition description as a pdf here.