She Is Thinking About the Flammable Nature of Things – Laura Põld

“She Is Thinking About the Flammable Nature of Things” is Estonian artist Laura Põld’s first solo exhibition in Latvia featuring new installations and objects that Põld has constructed by mixing such materials as ceramics, steel and textiles to delve into the nuanced layers of corporeality and vulnerability.

For many years, Põld has been interested in the agency and expressiveness of materials and media. Her works intertwine organic and artificial materials, referencing the fragility of matter and drawing attention to different layers of temporality. Alongside materiality and craftsmanship, her approach embraces technical failures, welcoming the unpredictability of life with an ironic and contemplative commentary on the challenges of navigating existence.

In Põld’s earlier projects, craft, ecology, folklore and feminism would function as interconnected threads within a shared milieu. This exhibition, however, adds a dose of autobiographical sentiment through layers of materials gathered from the artist’s home. It also involves a desire to celebrate the reaching of middle age as a female artist by using bold colours, flowing fringes and the sharp clanging of metal.

There are darker verses within these celebratory songs, hinted at by the clumsily sawed metal plates, slightly melancholic tablecloths and certain titles of the individual artworks. The pitch-black wall sculpture series “Misfits”, for example, underlines the dark history of witch hunts executed towards women of certain age and knowledge. The installation series “Adjunct to Her Bones Are Other Bones, Adjunct to Her Skin Are Other Skins” reflects the inherent interconnection of all matter, a viewpoint that informs all of Põld’s practice. Then again one of the exhibition’s opening pieces – “Enter the Darkest Room in My House (and Speak)” – invites the art public to open mental spaces where life and art interlace.

Laura Põld’s artworks present layers of material referencing places and contexts that have shaped her practice. In the new exhibition, viewers can encounter sculptural and craft-based forms and motifs, where one can sense the natural coexistence of absurdity, joy for experimentation and anxiety yet effortlessness. Communicated through eclectic techniques and the bold self-awareness of the forms, these immersive works become the thresholds for an artist entering a new decade.

Laura Põld (b. 1984 in Tallinn, Estonia) is an Estonian artist living in Tallinn and Vienna. Her formal education includes the study of ceramics at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn (BA), painting at the University of Tartu (MA) and sculptural conceptions and ceramics at the University of Art and Design in Linz (MA). She is currently a visiting associate professor of installation and sculpture at EKA. She has had numerous solo exhibitions and participation in group shows around the world. With Kogo Gallery, Põld has participated in art fairs such as viennacontemporary (2024, 2023), Esther New York (2024), Basel Social Club (2024), Art Brussels (2023), Liste Art Fair Basel (2022). Laura Põld has been awarded several prizes and scholarships, including the Claus Michaletz Preis (2021), the ISCP’s studio grant in New York (2019), the Grand Prize of The Cultural Endowment of Estonia (2018) and the Köler Prize Grand Prix (2016). She is and was also one of the recipients of the Estonian artist’s salary from 2023–2025 and 2019–2021. Her works are in various art collections in Europe. Laura Põld is represented by Kogo Gallery.