The Mind The Heart

In her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, Latvian artist Līga Spunde will transform 1646 in The Hague into a ‘gym for the heart’. Through humour, sculptures, graphics and moving images, Spunde confronts an embodied sense of numbness, and confusion. In a capitalist society focussed on profit and efficiency, rationality is privileged over emotion, and knowledge systems rooted in care, reciprocity, and collective responsibility are devalued. 

Why are we unable to experience deep feelings amidst an overflow of information and the current state of crisis? As visitors move through the presentation spaces – the reception, rehearsal and recovery area – they encounter representations of the daily struggle between emotion and rationality, or the heart and mind. The artist tries to hold on to the belief that the ability to do good and care for one another, while caring for oneself, is not lost, but undertrained – and that it all could be strengthened by practising empathy.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Riga, LV).