Elaborated from an eponymous exhibition held at the Latvian National Museum of Art in 2020, Family examines the visual, autobiographical, and theoretical strands that inform Eriks Apalais- practice, featuring texts on his work by the curator Katerina Gregos and Latvian art critic Santa Hir-a. Apalais draws from fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, literary theory, psycholinguistics, structural linguistics, and semiotics to pose pointed picture-form questions about the nature of memory, language, representation, and the self. Linked to these inquiries are the uncanny childhood experiences that seem to permeate his work. As Gregos notes -the strength of his work lies in his power of allusion, of understatement and enigma.- The effect achieved is liberating, lending audiences a fresh pair of eyes with which to examine a variety of experiences. As Hir-a puts it, Apalais- investigations of the links between language and visuality amount to -an emancipation from the conventional ways of look
