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MuseumLV Gallery invites professional artists to take part in the competition project GRATA BALVA 2025 “The Golden Age” in the field of visual arts.
The curator of the exhibition — Professor, Dr.art. Deniss Hanovs.
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GRATA BALVA
GRATA BALVA is an annual international competition project, founded in 2018 by MuseumLV Gallery and the cultural center Grata JJ. Every year, the project team invites professional artists from various countries — including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, France, China, Belarus, the United Kingdom, Russia, the USA, Switzerland, Korea, etc. — to share their creativity and new ideas at the MuseumLV Gallery venue. On average, more than 200 artworks form a multifaceted picture of contemporary art in painting, sculpture, graphics, ceramics, textile, and digital art. The exhibition takes place on both floors of the MuseumLV Gallery.
Previous themes of the GRATA BALVA competition:
• “Mystery. Ritual Art”
• “Source of Power”
• “#artefact #fifthcivilization”
• “#illusory #reality” (in support of refugees from Ukraine)
The aim of the project is to foster communication, exchange of experience among artists, and to promote their creativity. The monetary prize acts as a motivating factor supporting artistic activity. All artworks presented at the exhibition are available for purchase.
The participants of the competition and the target audience of the project are professional artists, whose works meet the gallery’s standards, and visitors from different countries.
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About the Competition Prize
The Grata Balva in Visual Arts includes two monetary prizes:
• One prize (€500) is awarded by the gallery’s jury and expert committee.
• The second prize (€300) is determined by the exhibition visitors through on-site voting for their favorite work.
The first prize is awarded by the gallery representatives based on their experience of working with the artist and the artist’s contribution to the activities of MuseumLV.
The fate of the second prize is decided by counting the votes cast by visitors during the exhibition. This approach actively involves the audience interested in visual art in the artistic process and also broadens the creative community.
To ensure maximum fairness for the artists, all works are exhibited without the authors’ names, only under a number.
Voting takes place in person throughout the entire exhibition and also on the official website of MuseumLV | Mākslas galerija | Blogs.
The award ceremony has two stages:
• The GRATA BALVA prize (€500) is awarded during the opening of the competition exhibition.
• The Audience Choice Award (Simpātiju Balva) is awarded at the opening of the next exhibition at MuseumLV.
Jury:
• Exhibition curator — Prof. Dr.art. Deniss Hanovs
• Representative of the general sponsor GRATA ECO HOUSE
• Gallery director Julija Eresko
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Important Information!
Submission period: from March 25 to May 31, 2025, during the gallery’s working hours.
Works submitted after May 31 will not be accepted.
Before delivering the actual artwork, please ensure that you have sent in advance to the gallery’s email:
1. Your updated CV
2. Your portrait photo
3. A high-quality photo of the planned artwork (preferably 74–200 KB) for the gallery website
4. Information about the work: title, size, year, technique, price
This information must be sent at least 2 business days before you deliver the artwork to the gallery.
Without this information, the work will not be accepted.
If at any point the number of submitted works exceeds the gallery’s capacity to maintain exhibition quality, the gallery reserves the right to decline later entries, following the principle: first come, first served.
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Artwork Dimensions for This Year
This year, artworks of any format, including non-standard sizes, will be accepted. However, the gallery reserves the right to refuse certain works. Upon agreement, paintings, sculptures, and installations (objects) are accepted.
Each participant is welcome to present one or two additional works thematically related to the main competition piece to enhance the artistic context, but the gallery has the right to decline them. Only one artwork per author is officially submitted to the competition. Additional works serve to enrich the perception and context of the main piece.
If the artist wishes to include a conceptual description of the work, it should be submitted in advance for inclusion in the exhibition display.
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To participate in the competition, the artist must confirm their intention by sending the following to info@museumlv.com
• Confirmation of participation (in the email)
• A portrait photo
• An updated CV
• A photo of the artwork
• Title, size, year, technique, price
After receiving the email, the MuseumLV Gallery team will respond with confirmation of participation and a work schedule.
Artworks are accepted only after the gallery’s official confirmation.
Submission deadline: May 31, 2025 (during the gallery’s working hours).
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The following works will not be accepted:
• Works with aggressive content
• Works that provoke conflicts
• Works that offend the feelings of others
• Works inciting ethnic hatred
• Works that do not correspond to the theme or specified dimensions of the competition
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We support all your creative initiatives in the field of visual arts and wish you great success in the competition and in your artistic journey!
See you at the gallery!
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Sheltering in the Shadow of the “Golden Age”…
/exhibition curator, cultural researcher, Dr.art, LMA professor Deniss Hanovs/
Concept of the Art Competition Exhibition
Context and Problematics of the Exhibition
In European culture, the so-called “Golden Age” is one of the most enduring mythological, literary, and also political narratives — a chapter in the biography of humanity itself. Throughout history, societies have often been dissatisfied with the present, afraid of it, or unable to cope with its unrelenting stream of events, crises, and catastrophes. And so, in search of relief, they have turned away from the complex, exhausting present, conjuring the idea of a Golden Age — a time that once was or is yet to come, that exists somewhere, or will one day return.
This persistent topos of the Golden Age shaped much of 20th-century cultural space — a century in which we witnessed horrifying catastrophes, many of which began with grand declarations of a new golden era. Wars, violence against nature, against ourselves and each other, bloodshed — all this Ovid already fled from in his poetry, as did the virgin Astraea, symbol of peace and harmony, who left Earth when the Golden Age was no more. In his Bucolics (Fourth Eclogue), Virgil promised the trauma-stricken Romans a new Golden Age, heralded by the return of the virgin — a promise, a fantasy, a literary cry of despair.
The 21st century, too, promised a new Golden Age through digital immortality, where global communication would create and preserve vast new pixelated worlds, filled with limitless possibilities for entertainment and knowledge. Yet this new golden realm carries its own shadows: deception, digital surveillance, citizen control, and data theft.
Our time is filled with challenges on a global scale: environmental disasters, multilayered social crises, identity conflicts — all generating cultural, political, and societal tensions, mass insecurity, and deep fatigue. Many long to escape such a present — but where to, when the interconnected web of events and networks leaves no island undiscovered? All the fairy-tale forests of hermits seeking refuge have been clear-cut; the deserts of prophets mapped, built upon, and most likely sold.
Do spaces still exist — or could they emerge — where the Golden Age lives on? As faith in a better society, where hatred and violence are (still? no longer?) unknown? Or is this just another illusion — a “deep fake,” a profound deception, a mirage of our own making? Perhaps it is not something to wait for, but something to create? Are we capable of that? Do we even want it?
Exhibition Objective
We invite artists to engage in a creative discussion about visions of the future — both in Latvia and globally — by exploring how Latvian artists reflect upon, imagine, or critique the concept:
The Golden Age: Promise or Future Forgery?
This theme is multifaceted and may be explored through various questions:
We invite professional artists to submit original works for a collective competition exhibition — whether previously shown or created specifically for this event — that address the core question of the exhibition.
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Ainars Mielavs. Paintings
22.11. – 28.12.
Art gallery MuseumLV and culture center Grata JJ from November 22 until the end of the year will present the first solo exhibition of artist Ainars Mielavs.
Ainars Mielavs has been a well-known Latvian singer-song writer for less than 40 years.
From 1976 to 1985, he received a professional education as an artist at the Riga Secondary School of Applied Arts and the Latvian Academy of Arts. He studied painting with the excellent masters - Silva Linarte and Silvija Jēkabsone. After a 30-year break, he started painting again in 2016. The exhibition gathers works from 1981. - 2024.
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