Multimedia research exhibition – How are you today? Emotional intelligence

The exhibition is dedicated to physician Ilze Aizsilniece (1966–2025), who passed away last year. It continues the conversation she began about the significance of emotions in human life, inviting us to look at them through the prism of art, science, medicine, and personal experience.

Emotions influence our choices, relationships, physical and mental health, as well as our ability to coexist with others and with ourselves. They also determine how we perceive the world and make decisions. In this project, art becomes a way to experience, recognize, and understand emotions.

“It is often difficult to speak about emotions directly. Art approaches them differently—even before words—helping us see what we are not always able to admit to or formulate for ourselves. Emotions are our reaction to what is happening in the world, which is why it is especially important to be able to recognize, understand, accept, and guide them,” say the exhibition curators Una Meistere and Daiga Rudzāte.

The exposition’s narrative is shaped by the works of 28 Latvian artists. Its focus is on the six basic emotions—fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and surprise—which, based on the theory of the world-renowned American psychologist Paul Ekman, are considered universal and significant in the course of human evolution.