Daiga Grantina's First U.S. Solo Show at New Museum Features Biomimetic Sculptural Installation

The New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York presents Daiga Grantina's inaugural U.S. solo exhibition, featuring the multi-piece sculptural installation What Eats Around Itself from January 21 to May 17, 2020. Grantina, a Latvian artist who represented Latvia at the 2019 Venice Biennale with Saules Sun, has exhibited extensively in France, Germany, and Austria. Her installation occupies a glass-enclosed gallery visible from the lobby, requiring entry to fully experience its tactile and textural elements. The work draws organic metaphors from lichens, highlighting their symbiotic, adaptable nature and ability to photosynthesize, and from Rainer Maria Rilke's poetic rose imagery, referencing his epitaph and poem Das Rosen-Innere. Grantina's sculptural forms, made from materials like cloth, plastic, and thread in colors such as red, yellow, orange, black, and purple, evoke biomorphic and Constructivist influences, including El Lissitzky's Prouns and Tatlin's counter-reliefs, while also recalling Frank Stella's later reliefs. Techniques include melting, tearing, and molding, creating a sense of individuality and non-human intersubjectivity among the pieces. The installation suggests ecological themes of growth, extinction, and post-human survival, with viewers engaging through shifting perceptual connections as they move through the space.