Cēsis Art Festival Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Rich Program
The Cēsis Art Festival will open this weekend for its 20th edition, featuring an international visual arts program including Amanda Ziemele's exhibition, Famous Five installation, and a flag project in the Town Square.
This weekend, the 20th Cēsis Art Festival will be inaugurated, offering a diverse visual arts program. The festival aims to support artistic creativity and large-scale projects while introducing classic contemporary art and facilitating art's interaction with the audience in the urban environment.
The anniversary program launches with three key events. At the Cēsis New Palace, artist Amanda Ziemele's solo exhibition "On the Second Floor" will showcase new large-format paintings created specifically for the festival. Ziemele's works are known for their ability to "live" in space and interact with their surroundings. She is a graduate of the Art Academy of Latvia and the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, won the Purvītis Prize in 2021, and created the Latvian Pavilion exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
The concert hall "Cēsis" gallery will feature the installation "Time Will Show" by the artist group Famous Five (Līga Marcinkeviča, Ieva Rubeze, Mārtiņš Ratniks), created in 2004. This work was already part of the first Cēsis Art Festival in 2007 and is now in the collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art. The installation explores the illusion of beauty and its ephemeral nature.
The Town Square will host an international environmental object series "raising flags", developed in collaboration with the Vienna-based contemporary art institution museum in progress, curated by Alois Herrmann and Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl. Ten flags will be displayed in Cēsis, created by artists from various countries, including Ghada Amer, Martin Grandits, Shilpa Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Minerva Cuevas, Maurizio Nannucci, Sophia Pompéry, Christian Robert-Tissot, Erwin Wurm, and Krišs Salmanis. The project transforms the flag from a symbol of belonging into a platform for artistic expression and idea exchange, fostering dialogue in public space.
The visual arts exhibitions will run until August 23. The festival program also includes musical events: a concert performance of Richard Wagner's opera "Lohengrin" on August 6 and 8 under conductor Tarmo Peltokoski, and a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein's operetta "Candide" on August 15 and 16. In autumn, the concert hall "Cēsis" will host the theatre program "Grand Prix", featuring productions of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Alphas".
