Artist conversation with Sandra Strēle
Channel: Mycelia: About Networking as a Female Artist
Date: 2020-04-24

Artist Sandra Strēle in conversation with curator Anabel Roque Rodríguez in the context of the exhibition "Mycelia about networking as a female artist"

Installation “Exotic, is it not?” as a part of the installation “Tropical exotic network express”, developed and made together with artist Penelope Richardson, 8 paintings on canvas, mixed media, 2020 and an artist book “Exotic, is it not?”

During Soviet times, plants in office buildings used to be exotic (cactuses, palms, rubberwood etc.). Why? Is it somehow connected to the “exoticity” the buildings expressed often creating a controversial reaction, a monstrosity?

In her painting series and in an artist book Sandra tries to answer these questions by depicting the soviet buildings in different real and fictional exhibition spaces overgrown with the plants that usually were used to decorate their interiors. The idea to put these buildings in different exhibition halls actualizes the problem of women artists (and not only – also all artist in common) to organize big solo exhibitions. And this problem grows even bigger when a woman – artist gets older. Nowadays it is still some kind of an exoticity to be a well-known middle-aged woman – artist whose work gets exhibited in big and powerful exhibition spaces.

The series of eight paintings is supplemented with an artist book that consists of short stories related to each of the paintings. The book and the paintings offer the viewer to rethink the role of a woman and, especially, woman - artist in the contemporary world. What does artistic success mean and what does it mean to be an artistically successful (woman) artist?
In her creative work, Sandra creates large-scale installations based on painting - a series of paintings that, in chronological order, advance from one story to another. She focuses on creating and interpreting secluded, alienated, sometimes lonely places, their architecture, and fictional everyday scenes, offering the viewer the role of an observer.

Sandra Strēle graduated in 2016 from the Art Academy of Latvia, acquiring her master's degree at the Department of Painting, also she had spent one semester as part of a student exchange programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She has received the visual arts scholarship of the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation in 2012, the Brederlo von Sengbusch Art Prize in 2014, the SEB Banka scholarship in painting in 2016, prestigious grant from Elizabeth Greenschields foundation in Canada and Young Painter Prize in 2019. Sandra Strēle has held a number of solo exhibitions, participated in group exhibitions and artist residences in Italy, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, India, Belgium, Germany, France and elsewhere.

More about the exhibition Mycelia: About networking as a female artist: https://mycelia.jimdosite.com/ and here https://www.platform-muenchen.de/category/blog/ 

We'd love to hear your thoughts on artistic success, systemic issues and networks, use #MyceliaMUC or comment below.