Samsāra was a major exhibition by Skuja Braden at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Riga, presented from March 14 to September 27, 2020. Marking 21 years since Ingūna Skuja and Melissa D. Braden began working together, the exhibition brought together more than 200 porcelain sculptures, paintings, drawings, and objects from museum and private collections, alongside works created especially for the exhibition.
The exhibition reflected the artists’ engagement with feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, social and political questions, and the events and transformations shaping contemporary society. Their works respond directly to the world around them, taking positions that are often critical, confrontational, humorous, or supportive, while refusing neutrality.
At the same time, Samsāra explored the influence of Buddhist philosophy on the artists’ practice. In Buddhism, samsāra describes the continuous cycle of existence arising from an illusory perception of the self and the world. For Skuja Braden, this concept became both a thematic framework and a principle for organizing the exhibition, offering a way to move between the material and the spiritual, the temporary and the eternal.
The exhibition was organized into eight thematic sections, exploring recurring subjects and approaches within the artists’ work. At its centre were the themes of life and death. The Room of Desire drew inspiration from Japanese shunga prints, the work of Sigismunds Vidbergs, ancient Greek erotic vessels, and Latvian folk songs, while the Altar created a space resembling a sanctuary for offerings and communication with ancestral spirits.
Other sections included People We Know, People We Would Like to Know and People We No Longer Want to Know, a gallery of painted portraits featuring figures ranging from Marilyn Monroe and Mahatma Gandhi to political and cultural figures from Latvia and the United States. Further works explored the Seven Heavenly Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins, hybrid forms and music boxes, theories and belief systems, and the relationship between form and emptiness.
Bringing together works spanning more than two decades, Samsāra offered an extensive overview of Skuja Braden’s collaborative practice while placing particular emphasis on their recent work and the new pieces created specifically for the exhibition.