Latvia

The pavilion presents a new work by artist duo MAREUNROL’S in dialogue with the archives of Untamed Fashion Assemblies (UFA), a series of experimental events founded by alternative fashion designer Bruno Birmanis in Riga between 1990 and 1999. Organised during a decade of profound political transformation, UFA expanded fashion across visual art, music, and club culture, defying conservative social norms inherited from the Soviet era, and offering an alternative to the commercialised fashion markets in the West.

Linking past and present, the exhibition highlights utopian thinking at moments of transition. It asks how collective imagination, desire, and visibility are produced as political and economic systems shift, and how futures and new forms of togetherness are rehearsed from behind the scenes rather than on the main stage. Rethinking UFA’s legacy, the installation is conceived as a backstage, where the clothing rack becomes a holding device and the architecture of the stories.

Newly digitised footage from Birmanis’ archive traces the threads of travel and bordercrossing, transnational community building, scarcity as the force for creativity and fragile political freedom. Returning to this archive, the pavilion asks what can be gathered today from the utopian visions of these festivals.