FINEST comics days in Riga

Tuesday the 16.11. we had several events bringing Finnish, Estonian and Latvian artists closer together and foster a fruitful future. The whole idea and concept was by the Finnish Institute in Estonia and kuš! merely helped to implement this great events in Riga.

During lunch it started off with a network meeting of Latvian, Estonian and Finnish artists and curators in MiiT, where they could enjoy a great lunch and presentations about the different comics scenes in the corresponding countries.

After David Schilter made a short presentation about the Latvian comics "history" (or the lack of it) and about kuš! projects, Ingrīda Pičukāne gave an insight into her work consisting of 2D and 3D comics, as well as animated comics and even more revolutionary - performative comics.

Joonas Sildre gave a very interesting insight into the Estonian comics scene, followed by another artist presentation from Estonia and the insightful presentation of the colorful blooming Finnish comics scene by Kalle Hakkola (in picture) from the Finnish Comics Center.

Then the day continued with the opening of the FINEST exhibition in the Latvian national library, where almost 30 artists from the 3 countries had made comics about the theme "morning, day, evening and night." Latvian participants where Rūta Briede, Mārtiņš Zutis, Ingrīda Pičukāne, Anita Rupeika, Sabīne Moore, Maija Līduma, Kristofers Reidzāns and Arnolds Soms.

Here you can see some people from kuš! and Rūta Briede at the crowded exhibition opening.

On the far left you can see Elina Sildre from Estonia.

The very nice buffet was provided by the Estonian Embassy.


After this buffet was finished the events continued in Tasty Telpa at the exhibition "paradis f (fake)" by Finnish artist Katja Tukiainen.

 Ambassador, artist and gallerist happily united in one picture.

Detail from one of the paintings.

After this very successful start of trans-baltic cooperation we hope to see more comics art from these countries again in Riga in near future. Rumours have it that next year there will be the Nordic Comics exhibition in Vilnius, and who knows, maybe it also will travel to Latvia and also Latvian comics will travel around along the Finest exhibition which should go to Belgium, Finland and other European destinations.