ieva jakusa

IEVA JAKUSA PORTFOLIO

Ieva Jakusa is a Latvian, Amsterdam-based artist and designer working with media installations and print through a research-driven practice. Her work examines how folklore and ritual function as social systems that shape collective identity and material culture.

Drawing on her background in Latvia, where traditional practices have historically served as a tool for sustaining national identity, and her experience in the Netherlands, where cultural symbols are often commodified, she explores how tradition shifts between resistance, nationalism, and global circulation. Through multimedia installations and public programs, Jakusa reclaims traditional culture as a raw material, open to reinterpretation and evolution, inviting audiences to reflect on cultural heritage, nationalism, and capitalistic appropriation.

SELECTED WORK

TUNED VOICES, 2025
9-channel audiovisual installation

Tuned Voices examines how traditional culture is often perceived as orderly, disciplined, and shaped to serve national identity. In Latvia, folk songs have long been presented as national treasures. Yet beneath these polished surfaces lies an institutionalised echo of oral traditions, reshaped to fit a homogenised sense of identity.

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FLOWER CROWN, 2025
Linocut, silver ink on silver paper

Flower Crown draws from Latvian folklore, where floral wreaths were traditionally worn by young women, and symbolically linked to fertility, nature, and cosmic order. According to myth, these crowns were woven by the Sun itself for its daughters, glowing with golden or silver light.

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FLAT NOTES, 2025
Video projection, performance

Flat Notes builds on the principles of Tuned Voices by shifting its focus to archival material and the aesthetics of degradation. Working with raw VHS recordings from the Latvian Folklore Archive, the work isolates the voice of a single singer from visual flicker, magnetic interference, and sonic noise.

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IN LIMBO, 2024
3-channel multimedia installation

The work explores the history of limbo, a dance from Tobago rooted in resistance, now repurposed as a party dance in the West. Emerging among enslaved Africans, limbo symbolises survival, with dancers bending under a lowering pole to enact triumph over oppression. Another interpretation links it to enslaved people boarding slave ships.

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VALUES WE VALUE, 2024
Archival print, laser engraving on wooden display

Values We Value interrogates classical museum display systems that have historically reinforced colonial power, turning the exhibition format into a riddle that destabilises authority and spectatorship. Through archival material on colonial trade and Indigenous beadwork, it exposes how Western capitalist worldviews clashed with Indigenous systems of value, land, and sovereignty.

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ICON OR ITEM, 2024-ongoing
Essay series with performative workshops

Icon or Item is an ongoing personal work that explores how cultural symbols are transformed, commodified, or politically instrumentalized. The work examines how economic and nationalist values shape culture and questions our role in cultural appropriation.

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SHOULD A CABINET DECAY OR MULTIPLY, 2025
MA thesis publication

This thesis investigates how national identity is constructed and preserved through cultural artefacts, using the Latvian Folksong Cabinet as a case study. It explores how the archiving of oral traditions transformed fluid, living expressions into fixed nationalist symbols, revealing tensions between preservation, materiality, and ideology.

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CHEAP DESTINATIONS, 2022
Site-specific installation with sound and mixed media objects

The Cheap Destinations critiques Ryanair’s low-cost branding of Riga as cheap and disposable by exposing the gap between commercial tourism narratives and local cultural identity. Through manipulated Latvian craft objects, low-budget materials, and graphic interventions, the project highlights how heritage is flattened and commodified in contemporary travel marketing.

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LOW-COST RIGA, 2024
Site-specific installation with sound and mixed media objects

The Low-Cost Riga continuation examines how Latvia’s cultural heritage is marketed through external perspectives, contrasting tourism branding with the values of craftsmanship and cultural continuity. By questioning the commodification of tradition, the project invites critical reflection on authenticity, cultural representation, and the commercial appeal of heritage.

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DRESSING IN DRESSES, 2024
Essay film

By allowing her grandmother to dress her in traditional Latvian attire and later wearing a Dutch costume in a photo booth, Ieva explores the role of cultural heritage where personal and professional identities intersect. Dressing in Dresses exposes the tensions between tradition, nationalism, and capitalism, questioning how these forces manipulate culture while arguing for tradition as a space for intergenerational dialogue and cross-cultural solidarity rather than exclusion.

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SOCIAL DESIGN INITIATIVE

BLOCKHOUSE.COMMUNITY, 2022
Digital archive

blockhouse.community is an interactive, continuously growing digital archive that invites residents of Soviet-era housing blocks to contribute their personal experiences. Functioning as a decentralized memory platform, it explores digital archiving as a tool for collective self-representation and shared cultural memory.

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I GREW UP IN THE BLOCKHOUSE, 2020
Publication

I Grew Up in the Blockhouse is a publication exploring relationships between Latvian and Russian-speaking communities in Latvia, using Soviet-era blockhouse architecture as shared ground for connection. Through interviews, personal stories, and memories of childhood games played in common backyards, it reflects on everyday encounters as sites for social relationship-building.

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MICRODISTRICT SUMMER, 2023
Public cultural programme (lead)

Microdistrict Summer was a city-commissioned public cultural programme exploring Soviet-era blockhouse districts as both architectural heritage and long-standing social spaces for coexistence across different communities. Through site-specific excursions, public surveys, and a temporary playground installation, the project activated microdistricts as platforms for collective reflection, encounter, and play.

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