Art Academy of Latvia (K2 building)
Jana KUKAINE. Plant Turn and Feral Feminisms
In the lecture, Jana Kukaine will outline the sources of the so-called “vegetal turn” in the social sciences and humanities and introduce some of the central concepts such as plant awareness disparity and the vegetal self. She will refer to the philosophical questions that arise when we begin to take plants seriously, while addressing challenges such as the anthropomorphization of vegetal world, i.e., the attribution of human traits to non-human entities.
Then, she will present her own research project on the agency of plants in contemporary art in Latvia, situated at the intersection of plant humanities, art research, and feminist theories. Kukaine will discuss her findings on articulating phyto-aesthetics and “thinking with plants,” and share the concept of feral intimacy that she has developed together with Zita Kārkla, that frames walking in the forest as a feminist act.
Jana Kukaine (Latvia) is a leading scholar of feminist theory and feminist art in Latvia, shaping the field for more than a decade. She is the author of two monographs in Latvian – Lovely Mothers. Woman, Body, Subjectivity (2016), the first major feminist reading of contemporary art in Latvia, and Visceral Aesthetics: Affect and Feminist Art in Postsocialism (2024), which introduces an innovative concept of visceral aesthetics grounded in women’s experiences in the region. Her work has also appeared in international volumes published by Routledge and Bloomsbury Academic. For her contribution to building a socially responsible and sustainable society, she received the International Economic Forum Women’s Award “Liepa” in 2024.
Kukaine is currently a senior researcher and lecturer at Riga Stradiņš University, where she leads a postdoctoral project on plant agency in Latvian contemporary art. Her research bridges feminist theory and environmental humanities, developing tools to highlight the specificity of Baltic art. She is also active as a curator, having organized more than ten exhibitions in Latvia and the Baltics since 2016, and contributes regularly as an art critic to Arterritory.com.