Exhibition"anslavs eglitis | homo novus"
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Project Description
Anslavs Eglitis (1906–93) was a jack of all trades — a writer, playwright, painter, journalist, athlete and dandy — the «young man» of his time, who spent his youth in Inciems. The exhibition is designed to be a social space for self-reflection. While interacting with the the exhibition, the visitor is encouraged to seek answers to the most important questions of life. The target audience of the exhibition is both young people and «young people» — everyone who is looking for their own way.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
Anslavs Eglitis (1906–93) was a jack of all trades — a writer, playwright, painter, journalist, athlete and dandy — the «young man» of his time, who spent his youth in Inciems. The exhibition is designed to be a social space for self-reflection. While interacting with the the exhibition, the visitor is encouraged to seek answers to the most important questions of life. The target audience of the exhibition is both young people and «young people» — anyone who is looking for their own way. Anyone who doesn't stop at difficulties or at what has been achieved, but challenges themselves.
The exhibition helps to get to know not only Anslavs Eglitis, but also to understand oneself, breaking down the border where the story of Anslavs ends and the story of the visitor begins.
Inguna Elere, the leading designer of the design studio H2E, who created the design concept of the exhibition: «The exhibition stems from Anslavs Eglitis’ own personality, his creative process and life experience. Its purpose is to normalise the uncertainty of life, emphasise the uniqueness of each way of life and inspire not to be afraid of the unknown.»
Writer Anete Konste, the author of the exhibition’s texts: «Anslavs Eglitis looks at the world closely as an investigator. He notices every little detail, nuance, sigh, curvature, pause, slightest deviation or divergence. And it is all brought back to the world, turned into stories, portraits, poems and plays."
The visual language of the exhibition is simple and mostly black and white, allowing the text on the walls and floor to dominate, as well as highlighting Anslavs’ own drawings. One of the strongest influences in the identity of the exhibition is the aesthetics characteristic of the Bauhaus school and modernism, which were also close to Anslavs Eglitis. This is evident both in the use of primary colours — blue, yellow, red — and geometric shapes, as well as in the fact that only lowercase letters are used in the exhibition.
Key objectives for sustainability
Sustainability is achieved by inspiring people to value culture on a much deeper scale. We promote the idea that our culture has no expiration date, but it needs to be nurtured to keep it and us healthy. Our project appeals to young people and "young people" by making this part of our culture as interesting to a grandson as it is to his grandma. We do this by digitalising our content to maximise accessability and longevity of Anslavs Eglitis' legacy.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The visual language of the exhibition is simple, mostly black and white, allowing the text on the walls and the floor to dominate our guests attention, as well as highlighting Anslavs’ own drawings.
One of the strongest influences in the identity of the exhibition is the aesthetic characteristic of the Bauhaus school and modernism, which were important to Anslavs Eglitis. This is evident both in the use of primary colours — blue, yellow, red — and geometric shapes, as well as in the fact that only lowercase letters are used in the exhibition.
There is a digital "book" in the centre of the exhibition which gives to our visitors an opportunity "to negotiate" with the writer, answering a dozen of rather rhetorical questions, such like "is it easy to be different", "what are you longing for?", "is life the best playwright?"etc.
The whole concept is based on the experience to interact with the book - there are different little doors to be opened for further informations or illustrations, to create an association as opening the book or switch its pages.
Our aesthetic is simple yet effective in this way.
Key objectives for inclusion
The initial idea of this project about an decade ago was kickstarted by the comunnity of Inciems village by preserving the memory of Anslavs Eglitis by telling stories, writing journals and rehearsing his art. Eventually the community and its municipal government came together in collaboration to create this exhibition.
At the later stage there has been involved the design studio H2E, to create the concept and final design of the exhibition, and in this stage the community was involved as well, as there has been survey taken to define the strategy.
It is by far one of the most accessible exhibitions in the area as it is completely free to visitors.
Additionally, it has free of charge worksheets for pupils and students that help them discover Anslavs Eglitis' creative work. The exhibition also includes a mini library called the "anslavs' guestroom", which is fitted to be like a comfortable social centre for our community, where anyone can relax and indulge in Anslavs Eglitis' work.
Results in relation to category
Sense of belonging:
Anslavs Eglitis spent 17 summers of his youth in Inciems, but his stay in Latvia was cut short when he emmigrated to Germany and further to the US after the World War 2. He would never return home during his life. Now we want to welcome him home and reclaim the identity and character he took with him to the US to bring it back to his home.
Our community deservs an idol, but not many are well educated about Anslavs Eglitis, his life and his journey. We want to give our village a figure we can all be proud of.
How Citizens benefit
The idea behind this exhibition was kickstarted by the comunnity of Inciems. We preserved the memory of Anslavs Eglitis by telling stories, writing journals and rehearsing his art.
Anslavs Eglitis' creative works were forbiden in Latvia during Soviet time, only after getting independent people got to know, there is a book Pansion in the Pallace (1962) written by Anslavs Eglitis about his time spent in Inciems. Recently there had been this awakening around the hidden history of Inciems and its idols.
Eventually, enough of our people took interest to an idea of an exhibition of Anslavs Eglitis that one went to work for the municipal government to start making this project happen.
Everyone became a beneficiary by sharing and receiving information about Anslavs Eglitis as anyone who wished to share or listen was somewhat involved in this project.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The whole concept is based on the experience to interact with the book:
- there is a digital "book" in the centre of the exhibition which gives to our visitors an opportunity "to negotiate" with the writer, answering a dozen of rather rhetorical questions, such like "is it easy to be different", "what are you longing for?", "is life the best playwright?"etc.
- there are different little doors to be opened for further informations or illustrations, to create an association as opening the book or switch its pages.
- the visual language of the exhibition is mostly black and white, same as commonly used for books, allowing the text on the walls and on the floor to dominate our guests attention, but still there are some pictures as well as Anslavs Eglitis’ own drawings and pictures "to illustrate this book".
Learning transferred to other parties
As a further result of this project there is published a set of books "Anslavs Eglitis' life in three notebooks" in Latvian and English, which covers his life in Childhood, Youth and In Exile.
Other interested parties might be schools or educational institutions as well as cultural institutions who wish to access our content.
