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Imprints, Vidzemes Market, Survival Kit 14, Lcca, Riga, Latvia, 2023
Photography, print on dibond 80x100 cm, text, private archival materials (photography) 15x15 cm,
video from private collection: 1h 46 min 51 sec
The departure point of the artist's research was her encounter with Dr. A. A. Duch in Zanzibar. He was one of the first exchange students from then newly independent Tanzania who was given a stipend to study medicine in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and had fond memories of visiting Riga at the time.
Similar student exchange programs were set up across the Eastern Bloc, and Latvia was hosting international students from many countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, as well as Latin America at the Riga Institute of Civil Aviation Engineers.
Through newly created portraits, interviews and archival materials Inga Erdmane retells the now largely forgotten story of international students of aviation focusing on their daily lives and friendships they built. Most of them left Riga in the 1990s when Latvia regained independence, but also the stipends were revoked and post-socialist nationalism replaced the soviet politics of “friendship of peoples”.
