Contemporary Western society is built on the quiet conviction that both the self and the world around us can be managed and regulated. Control promises safety, soothing our fear of the unknown, whereas dependence, entanglement and submission feel oppressive. At the same time, a part of us always remains inaccessible and unconscious. As such, the more we cling to the need for control, the more we rely on conceptions of ourselves and a world that does not actually submit to our will. “Safe Traps” invites us to reflect on a different logic: one in which the act of control, and our craving for it, reveals itself as the actual trap and the very mechanism that confines us.

This exhibition brings together works that treat control as a refuge which is as much a cage as it is a stronghold. They operate along a line of tension where allure and a haunting sense of estrangement exist side by side: comfort turns into unease, and familiarity into the uncanny. Whether dealing with digital fantasies, anthropomorphic depictions of nature or polished bodily aesthetics, these constructions reveal their own fragility upon closer inspection, eventually turning against the promise they made.

This double bind is embodied in Līga Spunde’s installation, which draws from the tale of Bambi, its original story and the Disney adaptation, as well as the tradition of trophy photography. Anthropocentric interpretations of nature are often deceptive: wildness and danger are redacted, replaced by a sanitised, friendly vision of animals. Spunde’s work, which is intentionally misleading at first glance, exposes the hostile essence of interspecies relationships. The deer, as the character of Gobo, has been reduced to a lifeless object, yet the human poses as a hero, still believing they prevail over nature and over life and death. In her digital drawing A Very Boring Game, Spunde continues to play with ambivalence, depicting a scene from the world-famous life-simulating game The Sims – an extreme manifestation of control. On the one hand, the game offers a therapeutic escape in which to create an ideal extension of the self, a home and a family. On the other hand, boredom soon ensues in this perfect world, prompting a search for something more thrilling in situations where avatars are pushed to their breaking point. This probing of boundaries and the deliberate self-immolation of the ego resonates beyond the digital realm in the cushioned reality of the West, where radical extremes are sought as a desperate antidote to ennui. This is the final stage of the illusion of control: we manufacture a crisis for ourselves so as to feel like heroes who have, seemingly by choice, relinquished the control they once possessed.

While Spunde’s works critically view nature compressed into the frames of a human-made simulation, Madlen Hirtentreu’s installation serves as a reminder that nature possesses the means to shatter those boundaries. Hirtentreu’s carnivorous plant, descending from the ceiling and adorned with pearls and metallic fangs, embodies one of culture’s most enduring tropes: the monstrous anomaly categorised by humans as the unknown ‘Other’. Such uncanny flora signify a reversal of the natural order – a moment where the edible becomes the eater – looming over the viewer as a silent memento of nature’s untameability. Hirtentreu’s second installation, Tomb on Rolex, marks the collapse of the human order principle; a gravestone has struck a luxury item like a meteorite, crushing a mode of existence built upon contemporary capitalism and conventional timekeeping. Upon closer inspection, the gravestone takes the form of a one-horned rhinoceros. As a species pushed to the brink and surviving only on the island of Java, it stands as a witness to our ecological crisis and the lost futures of the natural world.

The scrutiny of the man-made material world and the disproportionate worth we assign to it continues in the work of Ruudu Ulas, who explores its quiet, persistent instability. In her series Difficult Objects, familiar everyday spaces and objects are ever so slightly warped. Nothing is overtly wrong, yet there is a lingering sense of unease. Ulas frequently adopts an installational approach to her photography, drawing attention to the dialogue between the depicted imagery and the physical interventions within the gallery space. In her two-part work, this subtle dissonance exposes the absurdity of our pursuit of the exclusive or original in a world already defined by repetition and the reproduction of copies. Furthermore, Ulas plays with the core question of photography – the relationship between the real and the staged – introducing another ‘difficult’ sphere: one in which the viewer’s perception of reality is susceptible to the artist’s intention.

Anaïs Goupy raises similar questions about mediation, authenticity and origin within the context of the digital sphere and social media trends. Goupy focuses on deconstructing the representation of the hegemonic body as a commodified object, confined within the discriminatory frameworks of Western beauty standards. The artist blends the digital and analogue worlds by weaving AI-driven algorithms, fed with specific visual data, into her painterly process. Through this combination of human and machine techniques, trompe-l’œil illusions emerge in which the human body – which is so often the primary outlet for our self-control and an integral part of our self-image – takes on a grotesquely deformed appearance. In these images, the aesthetics of the perfected body remain recognisable, yet they manifest as if in a warped, glitched mirror, emphasising the deceptive nature of the idealised image.

“Safe Traps” reflects a society seeking refuge in the superficial and the illusory. We are surrounded by rigid categories, stimulations, simulations and aestheticised environments and bodies that generate a sense of security. By leaning on these constructions, we move ever further from the unpredictable and the natural. As we become dependent on these systems, we begin to reinforce and reproduce them ourselves, thereby giving power to the structures that confine us. In this way, it is revealed that humans are inherently dependent on these and other structures, and that our sense of control is merely a comforting mental trap.

Curator: Maria Helen Känd
Participating artists: Anaïs Goupy (France), Līga Spunde (Latvia), Madlen Hirtentreu, Ruudu Ulas
Graphic design: Ott Metusala