Kim? Contemporary Art Centre is pleased to announce the results of Kim? Open Call 2026 – from 40 submitted proposals, artist Signe Elīza Pook has been named this year’s laureate. Pook’s exhibition will take place in January–February 2027 at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Sporta iela 2.
The exhibition proposal Paper City, submitted by Signe Elīza Pook, is based on a spatial installation in which large-format paper, screen prints, sculptural objects, and everyday items form a multilayered composition that explores the relationship between individuality and contemporary visual culture.
Kim? programme director Zane Onckule notes: “Central to Signes Elīza Pook’s practice is her ability to transform observations and ideas into spatial and visual experiences, combining graphic, sculptural, and architectonical qualities. Her approach is characterized by an interest in the possibilities of materials, particularly paper, whose value and function can shift from an everyday and seemingly insignificant material to a spatially active element of the work. The exhibition Paper City continues this approach, bringing large-format paper forms, silkscreen prints, found objects, and light to the forefront within a unified installation that focuses on materiality and the processes of value creation. The artist simultaneously explores the visual language of print media and social media, highlighting the mechanisms through which attention and value are constructed, as well as how visual and informational fragments are severed from their original context and, when rearranged, take on new meaning. This will be Pook’s first exhibition in Latvia, which aligns with Kim?’s interest in supporting Latvian artists whose professional practice unfolds outside Latvia while maintaining ties to the local art scene.”
Signe Elīza Pook (b. 1992) is a Latvian multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between the Hampshire region and London. She holds a BA from the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (2019–2022), and an MA from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (2022–2024). In her work, Signe explores the possibilities and limits of visual language, creating installations, prints, and drawings that combine site-specific solutions with collections of smaller objects. Her artistic practice moves between the known and the mysterious, the precise and the incidental, the autobiographical and the universally familiar. In recent years, Signe has actively participated in exhibitions, including Hidden Wardrobe (2023, Southampton), at the Slade School of Fine Art (London), Small Time Projects, ASC Gallery, and the Sarabande Foundation (2024, London), MK Fringe Festival (2025, Milton Keynes), as well as at the European Parliament office in the United Kingdom, participating in the exhibition Positions in Contemporary Art: Europe Across Borders, curated by Kollektiv Collective. She has received the Wolfgang Spoerl Scholarship (2023) and the University College London Master’s Scholarship (2022), and was a nominee for the Max Werner Drawing Prize (2024).
The Kim? Open Call initiative was launched in 2016 with the aim of recognising and supporting promising artists and curators, providing the best possible conditions for the realisation of their creative projects. Previous laureates include Paula Punkstiņa, Anna Malicka, Annemarija Gulbe, Ieva Jakuša and Gundega Strauberga, Karlīna Mežecka, Sabīne Šnē, Jānis Krauklis, Toms Harjo and Jānis Dzirnieks, as well as curators Anna Laganovska, Žanete Liekīte and Laura Brokāne.
