Evy Jokhova's artwork “Mirror Image”

Client: Artist Evy Jokhova
Work commissioned for the Riga Photography Biennial 2020 exhibition
“On Photographic Beings”
Curator: Paulius Petraitis
​Exhibition date: 03.10–08.11.2020
Venue: Latvian National Museum of Art
Exhibition space: Cupola Hall

Fabrication of the artwork and installation manual by Valge Kuup. 
In collaboration with Nõelakoda OÜ (Ingrid Köösel) and Nistelm CNC (Mauri Mletsin).
​
Evy Jokhova: “When we first started developing this exhibition nearly two years ago, my first plan was to create a work that was entirely site-specific, and dictated by the space that it was going to be shown in; a sort of architectural intervention. Drawing on the idea of the mirror in a reflex camera, two identical modernist pillars running floor to ceiling and referencing Sixties Baltic design were meant to be installed side by side on the fourth floor of the museum. That space had a glass floor, through which the museum collection displayed on the floor below could be seen. One of the pillars was to be made entirely from mirror panels, and reflect what could be viewed through the floor on to its canopy that spread at a three-metre radius across the ceiling. The other pillar was to be made from pink fur. But due to the pandemic, our exhibition was rescheduled, we were given a different space in the museum, and the work had to change and adapt.
​//
As the pandemic spread across the world, and our exhibition was rescheduled, this exhibition was given a new space in the museum. The original work became entirely irrelevant in this space, and the whole work needed to be completely re-planned. Due to travel and budget restrictions, neither I nor the Estonian production team Valge Kuup could come to Riga to install my work, so we meticulously made a manual, a booklet, which gives step-by-step guidance on how the work should be installed. When conceptualising and fabricating the work, we worked from photographs of the space, without architectural CAD files, relying on measurements that the museum staff sent us. The manual was passed on to technicians from the museum and Riga Photography Biennial 2020 team, who were not familiar with the work.”*

*From Maija Rudovska's interview with the artists in an international contemporary art daily on-line Echo Gone Wrong >>