Priyageetha Dia's solo exhibition 'everything you need to see is already in front of you', RPB 2026

In her exhibition everything you need to see is already in front of you, Priyageetha Dia questions photography as a medium – repository of memories. Her perspective is rooted in the history of her family in South-East Asia, in the Malay peninsula, which in its heyday was considered to be the most profitable colony in the British Empire. During the Industrial Revolution in the 1870s, rubber manufacturing developed rapidly. The natural caoutchouc resources in South America were no longer able to satisfy the growing pace of production, and therefore the British government decided to artificially create new resources in the colonies of the Far East. Collected in Brazil, the seeds and seedlings of the hevea (a tree with a milky sap – latex) grew into huge rubber plantations on the other side of the world, where several generations of indentured labourers spent their lives, becoming cheap labour for the British rubber industry.  

Working with archives and conducting field research in rubber plantations, Priyageetha approaches the past from different sides. She strives to see and hear invisible and inaudible connections, and uncover those electromagnetic webs which ceaselessly flicker around us, which carry memories and in which all of us are joined together. At the same time, the artist joins the historical discussion about the mystical, ghostly character of the photographic medium, which transforms reality into a trace, keeping visual records of personages, places and events on photographic plates, paper or in digital files.  

The video installation Spectre System (2024) imagines a gamified plantation scene built using Unreal Engine, a real-time 3D creation programme. Drifting like will-o'-the-wisps in the forest are Inaivu – spectral orbs whose name combines the Tamil word "ninaivu" and the Malay word "ingatan", both meaning memory. Inaivu are like memory-carriers, holding the weight of a past that too often is silenced or forgotten, including through oppression and persecution. The tension between the colonial past and present-day reality continues in the vision Mesh: Prelude to Spectre System (2024), which shows elongated, contorted arms in motion. Reflecting the elasticity of rubber, they blur the boundaries between the body and the environment. In ghostly gestures they trace the ways the past survives in the material dimensions of time and space and how past events influence the present.  

Participant: Priyageetha Dia (NL)
Curator: Inga Brūvere (LV)
Text by: Aiga Dzalbe (LV) Exhibition design: Inga Brūvere (LV)

Image: Priyageetha Dia, ‘Mesh - Prelude to Spectre System’, 2024, Courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation. Photo by Marco Cappelletti

‍

About the Riga Photography Biennial‍

The Riga Photography Biennial is an international contemporary art event that focuses on the analysis and artistic representation of visual culture. In the title of the Biennial, photography is used as an umbrella term for a wide variety of artistic practices in image-making that continue to transform the language of contemporary art in the 21st century. The biennial’s themes range from cultural theory to current sociopolitical processes in the Baltic and European regions. The Riga Photography Biennial aims to capture and, in the format of an art festival, offer a shared understanding of the changes taking place in the world—changes that we need not only to see but also to imagine, translating today’s complex and saturated visual language into meaningful relationships—between everyday life, the camera lens, historical material, contemporary art, technology, and the future. How has the understanding of photography and the image changed due to digital technology, and how does it manifest itself within the context of a work of art? For the organizers of the Biennial, these are crucial issues to analyze and represent, offering Latvian audiences the most relevant examples of international art through exhibition displays, as well as introducing the ideas of prominent art theorists through symposia, discussions, and publications within the formats of exhibitions and performances. The first Riga Photography Biennial took place in 2016. The Riga Photography Biennial 2026 runs from April 16 to July 3 with an extensive exhibition and educational program, marking the RFB’s ten-year journey. For more information:
www.rpbiennial.com.