Black Carnation
C-P: Hi Konstantin, congratulations on The Day Before You Came – the latest iteration of your compelling and ongoing exhibition project, Black Carnation, which brings the largely untold queer history of your native Latvia to the surface. Through documentation, I’ve noticed that you have installed this body of work in very diverse ways depending on the venue. How did you approach the space at CFF, which has a distinctly intimate character?
K.Z: Each iteration of my Black Carnation series has a different focus – from a gay cruising beach to the Latvian National Opera or the first gay parties organized in Riga after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I am very interested in working with space to tell a story and set the mood – that’s why I’ve created partitions, occupied nooks and corners, covered windows, painted walls black… This time, I’ve decided to trust the image, to focus on my photographs to tell the story. So, the CFF exhibition feels like a new development – the most “white cube” show I’ve done so far.
C-P: The new exhibition title draws from an ABBA song. What made you change the title for this specific iteration, and how do those particular lyrics resonate with the theme of the show?
K.Z: It was a way to start differentiating the various parts of my ongoing project and you know, to jazz it up a little. Most of my previous work explored a public space – locations of gay cruising or parties – the familiar tropes when speaking of queer lives and histories. However, it is private and domestic that I turn my focus to this time. We are the sum of countless small, everyday acts – eating, sleeping and, inevitably, leaving – and it is these traces that interest me. Drawing on fragments from diaries and interviews, I re-enact, reimagine, and relive these queer life stories together with my sitters, through a restrained, somewhat clinical gaze.
The Day Before You Came, ABBA’s 1981 song, is essentially a list of mundane actions – “I must have left my house at eight, because I always do,” sings Agnetha to a monotonous music. The song provides a perfect soundtrack to the exhibition, it somehow sums up everything I was thinking of while working on a show. So simple, yet somehow so profound. It’s also a nod to the country hosting the exhibition. I love ABBA!
C-P: Your images are printed on thermal paper, which adds a layer of fragility and ephemerality to the installation. How did you arrive at this specific material choice?
K.Z: Soon after embarking on my Black Carnation series, I’ve realized that I am dealing with histories that had often left no written trace, that were deliberately forgotten or censored. I am reflecting on relationships that most likely lasted no longer than an orgasm on a gay cruising beach. So, I was looking for gestures, for materials that speak to the ideas of transience and impermanence – yellowing newsprint, found objects and, yes, inevitably fading thermal prints on the receipt paper used to print train tickets that take you to those cruising beaches just a short train ride away from Riga.
Each ephemeral image you see in the show does have an archival copy; an identical-looking frame that won’t fade and will look the same in, say, one hundred years. Most of the time, these copies are stored in my studio and rarely see the light of an exhibition space. But the process of creating a facsimile does evoke ideas of preservation and archiving, something I’m very interested in exploring further through the use of different materials. What, why and how do we archive? Is it possible to archive an emotion?
C-P: There is a strong presence of personal ads throughout the show, the Grindr of yesteryear, if you will, which adds an endearing and melancholic framing. You mentioned to me that this iteration presents some of your most explicit work to date, yet I find those elements in the space to be incredibly subtle and elegant.
K.Z: You see, I need to trust my image more! Before, I was somewhat dissuaded from including more explicit images for fear that they would distract from the main message, but I think they add rawness and honesty.
C-P: Are there any specific stories or anecdotes from your ongoing research that you could share that reflect the underlying nature of this work?
K.Z: I find it telling when some sitters in Riga actively want to sit for my photographs but do wish to remain anonymous. Some last-minute interview cancellations say a lot about ongoing self-censorship – better to leave things as they are. I love this quote from someone who went to the first semi-legal gay parties in the early 1990s: “(..) I asked the DJ to put on something slower, but he answered – this is a gay club and we don’t dance to that stuff. People were too embarrassed to hug. They had to dance at a distance from each other.”
But mind you, things are changing!
C-P: This project, if I recall, dates back to the pandemic when you were back in Riga. What around that time prompted you to dive into the queer history of Latvia? It seems to be a history that remains undocumented and untold, a reality that became evident to me when you showed me that publication by a leading journalist, which was remarkably thin.
K.Z: I have to say that since that book was published [R. Ruduša Forced Undergorund. Homosexuals in Soviet Latvia, 2014], a lot of work was done by scholars like Ineta Lipša, Jānis Ozoliņš, and Kārlis Vērdiņš to weave queer life stories into the historical record. So, it feels like an exciting time to work with the stories while they are being discovered, while memories are fresh.
But speaking of the pandemic, while studying and living in London, I’d always wanted to do something in Riga, not to lose contact with my homeland and home city. The lack of work during the pandemic gave me time to return to Riga and begin a self-initiated research residency. What I thought would last a month turned into six years and counting.
C-P: I visited Riga earlier this year and absolutely loved the vibe; I was incredibly impressed by the local art scene, with spaces like Kim? Contemporary Art Centre at the helm. As part of the local art community, how do you perceive Riga from an artistic standpoint?
K.Z: Latvians are often the first to point out that we are bad at co-operation and good at gatekeeping. But since I’ve started my Black Carnation project, the Latvian art scene couldn’t have been more supportive. ISSP Gallery is an amazing champion of Baltic talent in photography, while Kim? and LCCA are truly global in their approach. I do think that we can grow, both as an art scene and as individual artists, only through international exchange. Also, Riga is the most beautiful place in the world. Riga is my foundation, you know.
C-P: I see certain thematic similarities between your practice and that of Karol Radziszewski, whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with and whose DIK Fagazine and Queer Archives Institute (QAI) I am a massive fan of. Has his work, or that of any other artistic peers, served as inspiration for your own work?
K.Z: Definitely, Radziszewski’s DIK Fagazines are among my most treasured possessions. I do hope that at some point my work will be seen as a small contribution to an Eastern European and post-Soviet self-awareness in the context of queer history – something that Karol is a champion and a figurehead of. Talking of publications, BUTT Magazine has a huge influence on how I approach interviewing and writing – skills I am still developing.
However, if you looked at my scrapbook for the CFF show, you’d see screenshots of Chabrol’s films and excerpts from Tarkovsky’s writings, the paintings by Bacon, Freud and Morandi alongside archival photography – medical, pornographic or vernacular. While I try not to look too much at the work of professional photographers, Sophie Calle and some of Hervé Guibert’s works had a profound influence on my practice – their dry, somewhat sarcastic tone, that unlocks so much about humanity and human beings.
C-P: As this work continues, how do you envision the project evolving from here?
K.Z: Now that I’m spending more time in London, I’m thinking about how the ideas stemming from my research into Latvian history might adapt to my immediate surroundings. Do I look for untold stories here, or do I delve deeper into materials research to further explore the ideas that transcend national borders?
That said, my Riga studio remains an important place – there are still so many conversations to be had, sitters to photograph, archives to explore... Uff, wish me focus and luck!
Konstantin Zhukov's solo exhibition The Day Before You Came runs until October 31, 2026, at Centrum för Fotografi (CFF), Stockholm.