Your Breath
Madara Tropa (Latvia)
Madara Tropa’s artistic practice is rooted in contemplative observation while also actively interpreting experience. Her work explores the relationship between artist and floral form as an interconnected and dynamic system. Tropa draws on Alexander von Humboldt’s ideas on the interrelation of nature’s elements and Jane Bennett’s writings on material agency, a framework she developed in her master’s thesis “Every Second of Your Breath Belongs to Me”.
Through this lens, the plant is not a passive object of representation but an active participant. In Tropa’s paintings, flora assumes both physical and metaphorical presence, maintaining a connection to all living things. The work offers an empathetic, contemporary approach to representation – one that recognises plants as co-creators.
Tropa moves between fiction and reality as she seeks a deeper understanding of existence. In her paintings, elements of nature and evocations of place become a meditative experience where perception works through memory and contemplation. The floral motif, deeply embedded in the collective imagination, articulates profound questions of meaning, fragility and presence.
The exhibition presents a series of paintings created through a layered technique, where walnut ink, graphite and collage enter into a nuanced material dialogue. In her slow, meditative process, the artist explores the boundaries between inner and outer worlds and chooses to relinquish full control. Materials, pigments and forms assume a degree of autonomy, allowing the image to emerge within the ‘breath’ shared by artist, plant and viewer.
Tatjana Černova, curator of the exhibition
Madara Tropa (b. 1987, Latvia) studied at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking La Esmeralda in Mexico City and holds a Master’s degree from the Art Academy of Latvia. Her exhibition history stretches from contemporary art centres and galleries, including the Pier-2 Art Centre in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and Equity Gallery in New York, to modern art museums in Mexico. Her work is held in public collections in Europe and beyond and in private holdings in Latvia and internationally.
05/06–30/08/2026
Publicity image: Madara Tropa, “Indefinite”, mixed media (copying pencil, watercolour and ink on paper and canvas), 50 x 70 cm, 2025
