Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveller belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.*

Ajour (derived from the French à jour, meaning ‘to the day’or open to daylight)

Field covered by Puddle

Eye of a Needle

Spinning Top (Teetotom). Round and round it spins, untroubled by the world

Gelato Verde

Fledermaus

Gelato Rosa

Lilac (a petal)

Wandering Catamaran

Amanda Ziemele’s figures are strange creatures whose physicality and ability to maintain balance in reality remain a mystery. Her “paintings” wander through space and live their lives in a way that seems uncharacteristic of paintings. It is impossible not to think of them as living beings, because they can move on if the space responds differently than expected. And the traces of ideas, the imprints of imagined spaces from the past, do not disappear anywhere – they are taken along to the castle as well. If life redirects them elsewhere, they carry along their scar — a void left by a column forever unseen. And a pillar of some factory, having once witnessed so many encounters with art, will never experience the feeling of its base being embraced by a blue puddle veiled in silken illusions.

In the context of Ziemele’s art, the chosen location, the shifting light, and the interior details characteristic of the space play a crucial role, coming together to form a unified exhibition landscape. Her artistic gestures are always an invitation to experience and perceive. To discover within oneself the ability to sense the saturation of pigment, the materiality of colour, the corporeality of the surface, the physicality of the brushstroke, the dynamism of texture, the scent of paint, and the strange ability of the plane to change and take on challenging forms. In fact — to come alive. Her characters can climb stairs, glide smoothly across the floor, lean languidly against windowpanes, and sunbathe on the veranda. They (Amanda’s characters) are not defined by the dreariness of routine. They are capable of rewriting expectations and emotions and reveal the joys of the moment of viewing.

Exhibition text by Daiga Rudzāte

*Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky