Zane Žeivate

Zane Žeivate belongs to the young generation of Latvian artists. Her art serves as a platform for addressing critical issues surrounding women’s rights, emotions, and experiences, with recent focus on the position of Central Eastern European Diaspora artists within broader contemporary global art discourse.
Inspired by urban landscapes, Zane Žeivate selects familiar, functional metal elements and structures from the cityscape, with the aim to manipulate and deconstruct them. She writes poetry and embroiders on spatial objects that she creates, sews, screws and welds with her hands making and constructing visual metaphors that offers new associations within existing framework of spatial and political structures that are present in the city. Through these interventions, the artist seeks to reshape how the built environment is perceived, encouraging a shift in how we objectify and understand our surroundings.
A recurring motif in Zane Žeivates’s work is the ladder: “I am fascinated by creating ladders that seem impossible to climb. They may appear inviting, especially to the smaller viewers, but it quickly becomes clear that they won’t take you far, as they are filled with various metaphorical distortions. Ladders, which in society's understanding symbolize progress, in my creative process become a way to question the everyday actions that we accept as the path to progress."

Zeivate has graduated from Riga Technical University, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning and Sanberg Institute, Department of Social Space Studies of Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In 2021, Zane Zeivate published her essay book, Your Wrist Smells Like Orange.

Submitted by Maksla XO