Ilze Jaunberga
"Oh, Fortuna! Or another corner house"
17.01. - 01.03. 2025.


“O Fortune, like the Moon you are changeable”, claims a medieval poem, noting the inscrutable and arbitrary ways of Fortune, the capricious goddess of Luck and Fate.
The art gallery MuseumLV is proud to announce the long-awaited return of Latvian artist Ilze Jaunberga, known for her fusion of traditional academic painting with surrealist visions, offering a personal exhibition “O, Fortune! A tale of another corner house”.
Already since the early 2000s Jaunberga has meticulously developed figural compositions closely related to the Italian tradition of painting. One of the most recognizable motifs in this artist’s career has been the Carnival of Venice and its magnificent pageantry – observed not from a tourist’s perspective, but from within, drawing on her close ties to Italy and especially the creative community of Venice. Her mentor for many years was Enzo Rossi-Ròiss, a Venetian poet, publicist, and curator; their association not only facilitated the creation and exhibition of this artist’s paintings in Italy, but also immersion in the Italian language and culture. However, the surrealist carnival visions offered by Jaunberga are quite far removed from the dolce vita ethos, which in our region still is often associated with everything Italian.
The entire human existence depends on sustained luck, and is subject to the whims of fate. One appreciates the wheel of Fortune once it starts to rapidly turn downwards. We then say that our or someone’s “luck ran out”, but when the wheel carries us upwards, we proudly attribute the success to ourselves.
The new paintings by Jaunberga, combined with a retrospective of her earlier work, promise another turn in the Carnival of Life – the place of Venetian Palazzo is now occupied by a seven story apartment building in the central part of Riga, where, guided by the changeable Fortune, the artist happens to live. The exhibition shows how the carefree lives of people in this property, another corner house on the Stabu street, turned far worse than could have been imagined, revealing a legal nightmare concocted by a few of their neighbours who have run a criminal enterprise from their residence.
The artist herself, living through this legal drama, calls the apartment building a miniature “failed state”, where the apathy of citizens has allowed the fraud to continue, with “enterpreneurs” increasingly in charge of other people’s property, which may soon result in the eviction of law-abiding citizens.
Press release Jaunberga
Drawing on the ambitious parallel between these two corner houses on the same Stabu street, her own residence and the former Soviet KGB building, the artist highlights the banal persistence of evil, which sprouts wherever we, citizens, fail to stand up for our rights and democratic principles. The vigilance against corruption is needed every day, and the fate of democracy is being determined now, not in some final battle between Good and Evil.
The indifference from state authorities towards the blatant mismanagement of this apartment building has created a permanent Carnival that has trapped its participants with no easy way out. We are begging Fortune to release us from this spectacle, instead of being evicted from our lawful property. O, Fortuna, miserere nobis!

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