THE NIGHT BEFORE
Sandra Strēle (Latvia)
A: The ebb has stripped the shoreline bare. Perhaps it was never fixed at all. Imagine the sea caressing this coast in such a way only in your own lifetime. It looked entirely different to your grandfather.
B: I only imagine that I remember what now seems otherwise. It has all been and will forever be a semblance, for such a shoreline does not exist.
A: Look – in the surf, a golden fish! Now make a wish!
At once intimate and expansive, The Night Before is a personal meditation on new motherhood and on the fragile thresholds through which life continuously flows and overflows. I turn to hydrofeminist thought to explore the fluid and liminal boundaries that divide – and at times dissolve – our bodies and ideas, our choices, and our actions.
On the brink of ecological crisis, water rises as both witness and agent: primordial plants and fungi advance silently, swallowing houses, beaches, and pools. Within this swelling tide, the exhibition’s vocal “I” wavers, drifts, cools off, rocks back and forth, observes, and waits – hoping that what is tense and tangled might somehow find its way towards resolution.
Here, water is a realm of memory and transformation, of constant reoccurrence. It surges and recedes, transmutes one substance into another, preserves and encapsulates, submerges and resurfaces in endless cycles, to lay bare new yet fundamental truths about the inextricable entwinement of humanity and nature, while pulling us towards the great unknown concealed in its aquatic depths. To approach this unseen, to seize it, to hold it within an aquarium is both desire and impossibility.
The exhibition’s narrative resonates through keywords such as hydrofeminism, ecological crisis, fungi with eyes, pregnancy, motherhood, artificial insemination, and nine frozen embryos.
Sandra Strēle
Sandra Strēle (b. 1991) graduated with a Master’s degree from the Painting Department of the Art Academy of Latvia in 2016, spending a semester at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She has received the Art Scholarship from the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation (2012), the SEB Scholarship in Painting (2016), and the Baltic Young Painter Award (2019), as well as three exhibition grants from the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Her works are represented in major collections, such as the Latvian National Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Lithuania, and the Noewe Foundation, as well as numerous private and public collections in Latvia and abroad.
In her artistic practice, Strēle pushes at the boundaries of painting, creating large-scale series where figures, motifs, and narratives emerge, unravel, and return. These unfolding storylines oscillate between the infinite and the intimate. Strēle names this process seriality – a dynamic continuum in which familiar images are revisited and reconfigured, generating ever-new meanings and resonances.
The exhibition is supported by the State Cultural Capital Foundation of Latvia and The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.
Curated by Tatjana Černova
On view at the Rothko Museum from 5 September to 23 November 2025.
Publicity image: Sandra Strēle. “Triumphal Arch”. Water-based paint and acrylic markers on canvas. 80 x 40 cm (detail). 2025
