For twelve years now, the chaplain at Iļģuciems Prison and chair of LLSTA, Rudīte Losāne, has led the Christian Education and Upbringing Programme Mirjama, which she herself created. The programme is known not only in Latvia but also beyond it, both for its content and for its low rate of recidivism. From September 18 to October 14, on the 2nd floor of the Spice shopping center, an exhibition of works by students of the Visual Arts Studio that is part of the programme, “A Touch of Freedom 2,” will take place.
The Trojan horse, women, and impressionism in prison.
The Iļģuciems Prison Christian Education and Upbringing Programme Mirjama is like a Trojan horse that brings the values of a different culture into the prison subculture. Values that enlighten the soul and change the individual’s point of view.
For eleven years now, the programme’s instructors, well-known representatives of Latvia’s creative intelligentsia, have helped convicted women come to know the power of the word in its spirituality, music in its classical expression, the stage arts in their multifunctionality, and to live out the fates of the characters in plays themselves as actresses in productions by professional directors. They educate them in art history and teach them to come to know impressionism with the help of a brush. To take up handicrafts as an applied art, to enjoy freedom by singing gospel songs, to unleash talent by learning to play various musical instruments, to become acquainted with cinema and, by analyzing the characters and actions of the main protagonists in specially selected films nominated for and awarded at international film festivals, to recognize problem situations in their own lives as well.
Through its long-running work, the programme has left its mark on the entire prison environment.
One of the most frequently attended is the visual arts studio, which was established by the artist Marta Jurjāne and is led together with the artist Evija Rudzīte. In a separate room, where works painted in previous years are arranged along the walls, easels stand scattered about, paint palettes are laid out on the tables, and everything else needed in an artist’s workshop is present, every Saturday, under the guidance of the studio’s instructors, the women create another world.
Natālija: I often go to classes and events just to check a box, but the studio is the place where I want to be . I have always liked paintings. Only here did I realize that I myself want to paint. Women in prison draw too, but all sorts of little bunnies, little roses, and similar things. In the studio I fell in love with impressionism—color, light, movement.
Lolita: In an album of reproductions I found a portrait of a boy. He was so similar to my son that I painted it and it turned out well. At home I tried to paint something on the wallpaper before renovating, but I did that while drunk. I started painting for real in prison. I like coming to the studio, because Marta and Evija know how to create an atmosphere unlike anywhere else in the prison.
Alla: An hour and a half in a class is too little for me. I want to paint all day, because it gives the soul rest. At first I was afraid of the easel, of the oil paints; it seemed I wouldn’t succeed. But when everything began to work out, I felt like a child. I paint a flower and run to the instructor in joy. I often see in my dreams that I am painting. I don’t want to enter into this prison life; I want to paint.
Olga: When you create, you literally fly away in your thoughts. Then you don’t even feel that you are in prison; you don’t see the prison walls. I could not have imagined that I would ever paint. Now I want to change everything in my life. To visit exhibitions, the theater. An inner freedom and self-confidence have appeared in me. I have come to know the world differently.
These are only a few of the reflections from the fifteen women sentenced to imprisonment who worked in the Mirjama Programme’s Visual Arts Studio during the previous academic year and created their very own works.
Throughout its existence, the studio has developed a “golden fund” of paintings, intended for exhibition and public viewing. Exhibitions of works by convicted persons in a public space are not only a display of their skills, but a special way to address society on behalf of those who are behind barbed wire, tried and found guilty. A special way to express their desire to change their lives and to be accepted back into society.
The first exhibition of works by the studio’s students, “A Touch of Freedom,” took place in 2008 at the “BonhanS” gallery. At the time, it was the gallery’s most-attended event.
This year, from September 18 to October 14, the works of the studio’s students can be viewed at the Spice shopping center. The opening of the exhibition “A Touch of Freedom 2” on the second floor of the shopping center on 18.09 at 3:00 p.m. will be attended by the head of the Prison Administration, I. Spure, the artists M. Jurjāne and E. Rudzīte, the chaplain R. Losāne and former participants of the studio, the musical group “Sliekšņi un griesti” together with the composer Vilnis Punka, and other invited persons.
R.Losāne
chaplain