With or Without Wind, 2025

Ceramics, black firing, painting

“With or without wind” is part of the series “Laboratory of Tenderness”, developed during the international Ceramic Laboratory 2025 symposium at the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils.

The title of the work is a personal paraphrase of the U2 song “With or Without You.” The work was exhibited in September in Liepāja, a city often described as the birthplace of Latvian pop music, where sculptures and small musical motifs in the urban space refer to this heritage.

The piece is based on a figurative composition of two figures. Technically it is a demanding form: maintaining a sense of movement while guiding the work through the stages of drying and firing without losing its conceptual sensitivity. Such depth of work becomes possible in the focused environment of a symposium, where artists have the time and space to engage with the material.

The underlying theme of the work is tenderness—the way open interaction continually affects people and creates an exchange of energies. At the same time, the artist was influenced by the presence of fellow artists working alongside her: the precision of their work and the sensitivity of their textures began to appear in her own pieces as well.

A laboratory of tenderness—and we, small human beings, moving within it.