The “Banana Sea” Exhibition

From 9 April to 1 August, the Rainis and Aspazija Summer House (5/7 Jāņa Pliekšāna Street, Jūrmala) will host “The Banana Sea”, a solo exhibition by painter Laura Ozola. The exhibition offers an ironic and multilayered perspective on an everyday object—the banana—which, in the artist’s works, is transformed into a symbolically charged visual landscape.

Using the expressive means of painting and installation, Ozola repeats the form of the banana until it becomes a kind of infinite space—a sea in which humour, absurdity and cultural symbolism meet. In this visual field, the banana functions as a sign and a language, simultaneously embodying desire, vulnerability and the theatricality of consumer culture.

The exhibition’s main display consists of the artist’s latest works, in which she continues her characteristic layering of images and signs. Alongside the banana motif, other symbols of visual culture also appear—footwear, textile patterns, references to modernist icons, figures from popular culture and human figures. These elements create an allegorical, at times gently absurd and ironic space in which personal experience intertwines with collective cultural signs.

The exhibition resonates with the artistic research “The Banana as Sign and Language”, developed by the artist during her professional doctoral studies, which examines how everyday objects accumulate meanings in visual culture and become symbolic instruments of communication.

About the Artist

In 2007, Laura Ozola (1981) graduated from Ivars Heinrihsons’s Master Studio of Conceptual Painting at the Art Academy of Latvia, earning a master’s degree in painting. In 2025, she began professional doctoral studies at the Art Academy of Latvia. She has held several solo exhibitions, including “Horizon Without Clouds” at the Mūkusalas Art Salon (2012), “Early Morning” at the Sky Gallery (2009) and “The Little Hare’s Bathhouse” at the Māksla XO Gallery (2007). She has participated in group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, including in Austria, Germany and Belgium. Alongside her artistic practice, she studied law. Since 2008, she has worked at the Art Academy of Latvia, where she has implemented several significant projects and, since 2018, has served as a public relations specialist.