Doodad and Haberdashery
Lauma Muižarāja
16.04 — 20.06.2025
The fingers search for the zipper, slip into the pocket and pull out a bunch of keys. The right one is chosen by shape and weight, then inserted into the door without much thought and turned as if it were an extension of the hand itself. The buttons of the sweater are also fastened in the same way – until one of them comes off, forcing you to notice that it has two or four holes, a thread is drawn between them in a straight or crosswise pattern, and when you’re using a needle to sew it back on, you have to be able to push the thread through its narrow eye. And maybe this thread throws knots or the needle slips off it unnoticed, disappearing between the floorboards.
Artist Lauma Muižarāja has created an artwork for the Galerija Centrs atrium. Doodad and Haberdashery was created as a two-part work, an installation and a prose piece, challenging our perceptions of the agency of seemingly inconspicuous objects. This is the first collaboration between Galerija Centrs and Zuzeum Art Centre, and its goal is to make contemporary art more accessible to the wider public.
“Galerija Centrs wants contemporary art to become an everyday experience that harmoniously fits into the urban environment. Our current goal is to make Rīdzenes Street a dynamic cultural space,” says Lāsma Vilande, the director of Gallery Centrs. Continuing the programme of public activities on Rīdzenes Street in Old Town, Galerija Centrs is starting a collaboration with Zuzeum Art Centre. Artist Lauma Muižarāja has been invited to create a large-scale work specifically for the six-storey atrium of Rīdzenes Street.
The project’s collaborative partner, the Zuzeum Art Centre, is a place to explore contemporary art from Latvia and around the world. It is based on the Zuzāns Collection – the largest private Latvian art
collection in the world, which includes more than 30,000 works of art. Zuzeum promotes the exchange of ideas by organizing exhibitions and offering a wide program of events for people of all ages. In this collaboration, Zuzeum goes beyond its premises to bring contemporary art to the very center of the city. The goal of the project is to promote the wider public’s interest in contemporary art, while
simultaneously creating a connection with Zuzeum’s physical home at Lāčplēša Street 101, where exhibitions and diverse cultural events await visitors.
Lauma Muižarāja (b. 1998) graduated from Digital Arts Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London with a Bachelor in science, and will graduate from the interdisciplinary Master’s programme POST at the Art Academy of Latvia this summer. Lauma’s artistic practice spans mixed media, digital collage, video, and writing. Since 2019, she has participated in several group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, and in 2023, held her first solo exhibition in Latvia. Lauma’s works have been shortlisted for the “NEXT and ISSP Seeking the Latest in Photography! 2025” Baltic-wide award and included in several private collections.
The installation will be open to visitors of the Old Town free of charge until 20 June.
Photos: Rūdolfs Liepiņš
Doodad and Haberdashery was created as a two-part work, an installation and a prose piece, challenging our perceptions of the agency of seemingly inconspicuous objects.
The prose piece is available below.
A shiny silver button is winking at passersby from a gap in the gutter grate. Next to the button, through the fourth gap in the grate, a lost key is counting shoe soles – the one and only one, in whose honor the entire lock got changed. A few soles further, a downwards slope begins. The button turns its side to the passersby and rolls. “I II – \ / X,” it thinks to itself, making two full turns. After about 20 degrees, the button hits something and falls onto its stomach. In front of it, fallen lengthwise, lies a gnawed straw with a blocked digestive tract. Within a human finger’s reach of it lies an equally gnawed plastic “something” that looks like something that once held another “something” together.
There are several such “somethings” here – long and shiny, blunt and ribbed. Clips, collets, joints, corks and all other sorts of doodads – these are smaller things that hold bigger things together. An airplane needs screws too. And these bigger things, in turn, hold together the entire human inhabited world. There’s also these little strays here, that are almost never seen on their own, because then they are not particularly useful, and most often don’t even look like themselves anymore. It is very easy for them to become scraps. But a tiny scrap, in turn, can enter someone’s eye or get stuck in a phone’s charging port. And if you put this scrap under a microscope, you can find other, more mysterious scraps on top of it.
On its stomach, the button has slid along the side of the straw and reached something suspiciously soft. Underneath it lies the least important piece of paper, which for a moment was the most important bookmark.
With trembling hands and cold sweat on his forehead, he’s flipping through the pages of his book. The page numbers have turned into inexpressive scribbles and dance from one corner of the spread to the other. He raises his eyes – he sees a thousand expectant stares, which burn his cheeks like rays through a magnifying glass – and he can no longer lower them. A gentle wind blows and a sharp speck of dust lands in one of his eyes. The Minister winces in pain and folds his back. His stomach arches in the opposite direction and kicks the button of his jacket. In a steep parabola, it shoots out and hits the tooth of a giggling witness, who, having received the blow, falls backwards and manages to leave the heel of her shoe between the paving stones. The husband rushes to save his wife, trips over the heel and falls on top of not only her but also someone who had almost caught her. The spectators begin to fall one after another like dominoes arranged in a snowflake pattern.