Third Edition of Riga Biennial Canceled over Organizers’ Ties to Russia

The Third Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Latvia (RIBOCA), scheduled to open August 10 and run through March 2025, will not take place, owing to its organizers’ ties to Russia. The event had previously been postponed from its original 2022 opening after Russia attacked Ukraine in February of that year, with RIBOCA issuing a statement decrying the invasion and pledging solidarity with those calling for an end to the war. Agniya Mirgorodskaya, RIBOCA’s founder, is of Russian and Lithuanian descent and until recently, funded the event using money supplied by her father, Russian fishing magnate Gennady Mirgorodsky. RIBOCA’s Russian funding was already a topic of heated debate in the Latvian art world owing to the country’s fraught history under Soviet rule, which came to an end in 1990.

Latvia, which shares a border with Russia, has welcomed some 6,000 Ukrainian refugees since Putin’s incursion into their homeland.RelatedHELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION SUED FOR “DESTROYING” PAINTER’S LEGACYBMA CREATES PAID INTERNSHIPS HONORING VALERIE MAYNARD “It appears that the heritage of our executive members, which includes Russian among Lithuanian and Latvian nationalities, is something too significant to overcome as the Russian attack on Ukraine rekindles tensions of an occupied past,” wrote the organizers in astatement. Retitled “There is An Elephant in the Room” following the 2022 cancellation of RIBOCA3’s original concept, the main show was to be curated by SUPERFLEX and would have featured twenty-five female-identifying artists, whose work was responding to various timely issues was to have appeared at venues across the city. “We have been forced to confront the difficult reality that what we are providing may simply be inappropriate or unwanted in these challenging times, no matter how benevolent our intentions may be,” wrote the organizers. “Furthermore, in the best interests of our team and artists’ wellbeing, we have decided to pause our efforts.”.