Niklāvs Kadiķis
We were here once

Sometimes a sofa on the terrace is enough. A meadow that becomes a stage. A window that doesn’t close all night. Four walls and a commitment to be - not someone else, but yourself. Not to the world, but simply and together. These places were not made for us. They are not made with our voices, bodies or laughter in mind. And yet - we find them, we occupy them for a while, we fill them with our movement, our lightness, our transformations. 

In these spaces, we are not the explanation. We are not an example or an answer to a question that no one has asked. We are soft. We undress from the roles that the world puts on as uniforms and we breathe. There may be desire here. There may be ignorance. And a silence that is not interrupted by the question, “Why?”

The story of the series is based on the experience of a holiday encounter. The images follow the rhythm of the gathering: the accumulation of energy, the rush of communication. From the quiet places where we are next to each other, to the warmth whose imprint remains even after returning home. The work is based on different stories of queer experience - stories of my own and stories that are rarely found in the repositories of memory. From these testimonies, a living, alternative archive continues to grow, in which personal moments and collective memory merge.

In a world where queer histories have often been erased from archives and where dominant narratives often simplify our existence, these images attest to another kind of presence - one that inhabits the spaces we create for ourselves, if only for a moment.