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Patchouli Scented Mudbath

Paula Zvane (LV), Victoria Björk (IS), Kamilė Pikelytė (LT)
10/10-31/10
Patchouli Scented Mudbath is an immersive, performative exhibition that explores the rituals, failures, and absurdities of self-maintenance in a post-wellness age. Unfolding as a dystopian spa — both sanctuary and site of surrender — the exhibition entangles the promise of purification in layers of performance, decay, and transformation. The installation brings together sculptural works by Victoria Björk, Kamilė Pikelytė, and Paula Zvane, forming an alien environment that blurs care with contamination, comfort with discomfort.

Within this space, cleanliness becomes suspicious, filth becomes tender, and care takes on a feral form. Drawing from traditions of spiritual bathing, mud therapy, and speculative design, Patchouli Scented Mudbath constructs a liminal terrain where care is both sacred and corrupted. The patchouli-scented mud functions as both medium and message — a site of healing and haunting. 
The artists explore the cyclical nature of cleanliness and dirt, care and decay, and how these opposing forces intertwine physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Through sculpture and performance, they examine the gestures we perform to maintain or purify — through bodily ritual, domestic habit, or emotional shedding.
Here, dirt is not residue but a transformative agent: a material of memory, instinct, and change. In this spa, the only detox is surrender.











 

 Victoria Björk is a visual artist and curator from Reykjavík, Iceland, currently based in Hamburg, Germany. In her practice, Victoria navigates the fragile equilibrium of time and nature, nurture and destruction, memory and dream. Working with sculpture, scenography, poetry, and performance, she constructs symbolic fragments that evoke suspended narratives where the ephemeral is held, if only briefly.  

Kamilė Pikelytė is a Lithuanian artist based in Vilnius. Her work engages with marginal and overlooked materials: physical remnants, found footage, and elements from domestic or industrial settings. Through installation and performance, she employs anthropomorphic representations to examine humanity’s dominance and its tendency to destroy non-human life forms. Pikelytė’s works construct abstract, emotionally charged fantasies that appear as eerie mirages of possible futures.

Paula Zvane is a Latvian artist currently based in London. Working across sculpture, drawing, and painting, she combines materials such as metal, fur, oil, and fabric to explore the shared terrain between human and non-human (animal, surreal) existence. Zvane is preoccupied with questions of material emotion and transformation — how to make matter feel, and how to turn one state into another.

Graphic design: Elīna Salnāja
Exhibition supported by SCCF, Tālava cider
ERNESTA BIRZNIEKA-UPISA STREET 15-5, RIGA WED—SAT 16:00—20:00    ERNESTA BIRZNIEKA-UPISA STREET 15-5, RIGA WED—SAT 16:00—20:00   ERNESTA BIRZNIEKA-UPISA STREET 15-5, RIGA WED—SAT 16:00—20:00   ERNESTA BIRZNIEKA-UPISA STREET 15-5, RIGA WED—SAT 16:00—20:00   ERNESTA BIRZNIEKA-UPISA STREET 15-5, RIGA WED—SAT 16:00—20:00