Audiovisual performance in the closing programme of the exhibition “HOW ARE YOU TODAY? Emotional intelligence”.
13 September, 13:00
Six Caprices for Solo Violin / 6 Capricci per violino solo
Solo violin: Magdalēna Geka
Set design and concept: Krista Vindberga-Auzniece
ODISEJA transforms the exhibition space into a journey through emotional territories. The viewer is invited to embark on an experience in which sound, movement, and space form a unified score.
Based on Salvatore Sciarrino’s Six Caprices for Solo Violin, six stations corresponding to the six basic human emotions have been created within the space: joy, sorrow, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise. The violinist becomes a guide, a modern-day Odysseus who rather than returning home, leads the audience through inner landscapes. Each stop is an encounter with a specific emotional state.
The visual concept of the performance is based on the image of the Greek goddess Artemis. Artemis is the goddess of hunting, the moon, and the wilderness, constantly crossing the boundaries between the forest and civilization, light and darkness, life and death. She is both a protector and a hunter. This contradiction resonates with the dual nature of emotions: they protect, warn, and guide us, yet at the same time, can also overwhelm and subjugate us.
In her performance, Magdalēna Geka becomes the conductor of the exhibition’s score. Just as Artemis has her bow and arrow, Magdalēna has her violin and bow. With them, she captures and simultaneously sets music free.
Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino’s Six Caprices for Solo Violin were inspired by the legendary 24 Caprices for Solo Violin written nearly two centuries earlier by his compatriot, Niccolò Paganini. By examining these “caprices” by Paganini and the various virtuoso violin techniques explored in them from the perspective of contemporary musical language, Sciarrino has absorbed and transformed them into an entirely new vision of the violin and its expanded techniques.
Describing himself as self-taught, Salvatore Sciarrino is one of today’s most authentic and distinctive composers. Born in 1947 in Palermo, in his early youth he was engrossed with the visual arts; during his teenage years, he began experimenting with composing music. Sciarrino is a master of vivid imagery and nuanced emotional tones, and his works are regularly performed by the world’s most prominent contemporary music ensembles.
Violinist Magdalēna Geka is one of the brightest and most active members of the new generation of Latvian musicians and performs extensively throughout Europe as a soloist, chamber musician, and concertmaster. In 2025 Geka received Latvia’s Grand Music Award in the category “For Outstanding Work in an Ensemble”, having previously been nominated in the categories “Young Artist of the Year” in 2014 and “Outstanding Interpretation” in 2020. In 2022 she was nominated in three categories for the prestigious German Opus Klassik recording award, including “Young Artist of the Year” for her album of Maija Einfelde’s violin sonatas, released by the label Skani and performed in duet with pianist Iveta Cālīte. Since spring 2022, Geka has been the first violinist of the distinguished French quartet Akilone, and since January 2024, has served as concertmaster of Latvia’s State Chamber Orchestra Sinfonietta Rīga.
As an orchestral musician, Magdalēna Geka has performed with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre de Paris, and other French national orchestras; she also regularly performs as concertmaster and performance director with Kremerata Baltica, the Orchestre national
d’Auvergne, the Orchestre Hexagone, the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe, and Ensemble Appassionato. Performing the music of contemporary composers is particularly important to her. Since fall 2020, Geka has been playing an exceptional violin crafted by Alessandro Gagliano in 1734, which has been graciously loaned to her by the Anima Music Foundation in Paris.
The practice of artist and set designer Krista Vindberga-Auzniece combines drawing, installation, video, sound, and spatial objects. In her works, time, memory, and bodily experience are explored as fluctuating material structures.
Vindberga-Auzniece’s works are often created through a slow and physically intense process through the use of graphite, charcoal, concrete, light, and movement. She is interested in the tension between presence and disappearance, personal and collective memory, and the living and the artificial, as well as in the ways in which space can become a vehicle for emotional and psychological experience.
A significant part of Vindberga-Auzniece’s professional work is connected to the performing arts. She has created set designs and visual dramaturgy for numerous theater and opera productions, as well as performances. This experience has also significantly influenced the artist’s practice in the visual arts, where sound, movement, light, and the viewer’s presence are often organized as a unified spatial dramaturgy.
Vindberga-Auzniece’s works can be found in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, the European Parliament, BTA ART, and other public and private collections.