Unidentified

The body of work is made from slides found in a tea tin in a rented apartment in Riga. The slides have been in a closet for decades and the owner has built up his collection from personal travel images and pornographic pictures taken in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet occupation stripped people of their power, self-determination and identity. Given that, pornography is defined as sex detached/separated from the individual, where the human desire for intimacy is reduced to the satisfaction of sexual urges, the found collection demonstrates an attempt to distance oneself from the order defined by power, using pornography as a means of alienation.

Living in a time when war has entered our collective consciousness, where people are not defined as individuals, but are instead turned into numbers and tools for the ambitions of power, a new visual narrative has been constructed from the images found, which tells a story of depersonalisation, power and death.

Līga Stibe (1984) was shortlisted for the FK Prize final with these series and the jury recognized it as one of the three best projects. She attended photography classes with Andrejs Grants, graduated from the ISSP School this year, participated in contemporary dance and music festivals in Latvia and Russia with video scenography works for dance shows and noise music performances.