Latvia and Estonia have always been good neighbors. And recently, when it comes to art, they seem to be becoming even better friends. "What has been happening for the last few years is that the Baltics have gotten more interested in each other again," says Šelda Puķīte.

"They're excited about seeing much more of their neighboring country's art."

Puķīte is the curator "White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas," a new exhibition at the Kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga showcasing the work of three Estonian artists.

It's the latest installment of a long-term collaboration between Kim?, the Tartu-based Kogo Gallery and LOOK! Gallery, which is also in the Latvian capital. The aim is to strengthen ties between the Estonian and Latvian contemporary art scenes while also creating new platforms for artists from the two countries to share their work.

And things are going well.

"It feels like that the local art scene is kind of grasping for it," says Puķīte of the response to Estonian artists displaying their work in Latvia. "And when we bring Latvian artists to Estonia, I see those little roots that are growing there (too)."

"It has always been important for me," she adds and, as a Latvian living in Estonia, Puķīte is well-placed to observe how this artistic relationship has developed. "But with the years, I feel like that these 'bridgings' in the region have become even more important. We've kind of started to cherish each other more."

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The mutual affection between the two Baltic neighbors was already evident earlier this year in Estonia when Latvian artists Krista Dzudzilo and Aleksandrs Breže both held solo exhibitions in Tartu. Now, as winter arrives, it's the Estonians' turn to head to the Latvian capital and show what they can do.

First up in Riga was Laura Põld, whose show "She is Thinking About the Flammable Nature of Things," opened at LOOK! Gallery in mid-November. Next, is an Estonian triple-header featuring Kristi Kongi, Anna Mari Liivrand and Eike Eplik, each adding their own flourish to the broader canvas that is "White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas" combing to create what Puķīte refers to as "cosmo poetry."

"Each [artist] metaphorically becomes part of this cosmic endeavor which is the process of a star dying when it burns out," she explains. All that remains when a star dies is "this core, which is called the white dwarf, and the nebula, which is the gases that bleed out from the dying star."

Though that may seem bleak at first, as Puķīte points out, where there is death, there is also new life. "Nebulas often become incubators, collecting the leftovers of the star and start to create new planets," she says.

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Endings leading to new, unexpected beginnings is a concept artist Anna Mari Liivrand is no stranger to. Lately, Liivrand has been especially interested "in cemetery symbolics and what remains behind about person when they are no longer there."  

Her work for "White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas," takes inspiration from cemetery gates and iron crosses, she says, as well as little bits and pieces that people forget or get handed in at lost and found – "these small elements that indicate human presence but aren't grand gestures."

Liivrand also created a series of stained glass works for the Riga exhibition, inspired by sacral architecture. "Stained glass has been used a lot in church architecture," she says, pointing out that it was also a feature of 19th-century industrial constructions.

In Estonia, "there are a lot of old manors from the 18th or the 19th century that have now been forgotten and stand-alone," Liivrand explains. "So, I wanted to bring into this exhibition this environment of ruins, which for me are also markers of times that have passed. They're interesting places of remembrance but also hope, as over time they somehow get eaten by the foliage and the new life that finds its way."

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Nature's habit of working its way into every nook and cranny is something sculptor Eike Eplik has also explored in her previous exhibitions. As curator Šelda Puķīte explains, Eplik's work has always – "sometimes more specifically, sometimes more abstractly" –  been about the natural world.

In "White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas," Eplik definitely went in the latter direction. "I'm not using plants directly here as I have done with some earlier works," Eplik says "But, of course, you can still recognize some elements of plants or nature in general there."

Central to her part of the exhibition is a set of porcelain sculptures resembling "ancient creatures that could have been living in the sea, buds that are going to blossom or the cocoons of insects – they look familiar somehow but you can't really say what they are," she says.

"I tried to create an environment that is like in the very beginning – when nothing is going on yet. And then, something starts to crack. And come alive." To enhance that effect, Eplik incorporated sound into her work for the first time.

It's "very minimalistic," she says, and was produced using the porcelain sculptures themselves. "I wanted to work with the sound of the material, so I was just playing around with them. For me, it's an experimental thing at the moment but I hope it will be as I imagine it."

Improvising is a key part of Eplik's artistic process. Bus as she points out, that's not as simple as it may sound.

"To be able to improvise, you need to have control, and you have to know the material you are working with really well," she says. "It's like actors also say – if you don't know the material, you can't have the freedom to play around with it."

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As we chat on Zoom, the bright whites and blues of an Estonian winter are clearly visible through the window behind Eplik. But when it comes to colors and the moods they invoke, that's clearly Kristi Kongi's domain.

I last spoke to Kongi in May at the opening of her show "Water is an Eternal Witness. Colour Indigo" at the Kogo Gallery in Tartu. The seasons have certainly changed since then, but what impact has that had on her work?

"My color language moves, always," Kongi says. "It depends on the concept or the idea. I think it's a little bit smoother (now). But it's still bright," she laughs. "This has not changed."

"Maybe I brought this anxious(ness) from the Kogo show here a little bit. But here (in Riga), it's more like I'm floating and dealing with the shadows and skies. And of course, with me," Kongi says, when I ask about her tendency to let her work take over the entire gallery space, "it's not just the paintings – it's also the walls. I've painted the walls like clouds, so everything is connected with the sky and the light around us."

"I really like the concept of the nebula and the exhibition in general, where all our works can exist next to or inside each other. So, I took this nebula as the starting point and it goes everywhere. It can also go inside Eike's space or it can go inside Anna Mari's space too," she says.

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There's plenty more we could discuss about "White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas," but there's one theme we keep returning to during our conversation – the idea that somehow life always finds a way.

Against the backdrop of significant cuts to the Estonian cultural sphere  – a topic Kristi Kongi delivered an impassioned speech about at the Presidential Rose Garden earlier this year – I wonder if that notion might also apply to art itself. Will art too also manage to find a way?

"When I gave this speech, I wanted to point out that the country itself is strong when the culture and art are strong," Kongi says. "I strongly believe and feel that art is the way to sense something or maybe just to see and feel things a little bit differently, through art. You can survive through that."

"And not only art, it's the whole of culture, all mediums, like literature or cinema or theater. Everything. I know politicians can't see that because I see how they react, or how they talk. It's not familiar to them, and maybe it's not useful for them," she continues.

"But I remember something I heard a few months ago from a scientist from Estonia, Marju Lauristin. She was discussing with her colleague why art and artists are important. She said scientists create little details and artists use those details and create the world. She said it about art and also about literature. It was really beautiful and really well said."

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"White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas" opens at the Kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga on Friday, November 29 and will remain on display until January 26.

More information is available here.

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