Art Riga Fair 2021

Art Riga Fair returned in October 2021 after skipping 2020 entirely, the only year in the fair's run to be cancelled outright by the pandemic. Its 7th edition swapped the familiar Latvian Railway History Museum for a new central address, the "Vernisāža" entertainment and events centre on Tērbatas iela, and ran for two weeks even as Latvia entered a fresh state of emergency partway through.

A pause, then a return: 2020 to 2021

Like art fairs across Europe, ART RIGA FAIR held no physical edition in 2020 as the pandemic took hold. The fair kept the market moving in the meantime through an online auction platform, "Mākslas Izsoles" ("Art Auctions"), curated by Gaļina Maksimova, which offered hundreds of lots for live online bidding: paintings, graphics, photography, porcelain, sculpture, books and posters. By autumn 2021 the fair was ready to bring galleries, artists and collectors back into a room together.

A new address: Vernisāža, Tērbatas iela 2

For this one edition only, Art Riga Fair left the Latvian Railway History Museum, its venue in the surrounding years, for the "Vernisāža" entertainment and events centre at Tērbatas iela 2, on the corner of Tērbatas and Merķeļa streets in central Riga. The fair ran from 3 to 16 October 2021, a two week run. LTV (Latvian Television), reporting on 7 October, early in the run, confirmed the fair continued "jau septīto reizi", already for the seventh time.

Galleries and artists, by country

More than 40 artists and gallerists took part, per LTV's 7 October 2021 report. Foreign exhibitors came from:

alongside a wide representation of contemporary Latvian painters and sculptors. The fuller seven-country list comes from the state tourism portal Latvia Travel. As rus.lsm.lv noted, these foreign guests made the trip despite the pandemic-era travel difficulties of that year.

The fair's own 2021 participant list names the artists, galleries and collections on show:

Program: masterclasses, a perfume lecture, a concert

Alongside the stands, the fair ran weeks of side programming: artist meetings and discussions, creative masterclasses and performances by young artists (LTV). Confirmed program items include a masterclass by Latvian artist Aleksandrs Neberekutins, a lecture by Tamara Gezerdava on the perfumer Jacques Cavallier, and a concert by the band "Cement" (Цемент). See the Program tab for the full list.

Continuing through a state of emergency

Latvia declared a new, three month COVID-19 state of emergency from 11 October 2021, five days before the fair's scheduled close. Rather than cut the run short, organizer Gaļina Maksimova confirmed to rus.lsm.lv that Art Riga Fair would continue on schedule to 16 October, observing the new restrictions. The publication's own headline captured the mood:

"Art Riga fortified itself with Cement, and keeps working through the state of emergency." rus.lsm.lv headline, translated from Russian (2021)

Organizers

Art Riga Fair 2021 was organized by Happy Art Museum (HAM), with Gaļina Maksimova and Dags Vidulejs as curators, the same partnership behind the fair since its 2014 launch.