I exist in two places / Es eksisteju divas vietas / Esisto in due posti is the result of a two and a half month artist residency in Trapani, a city on the west coast of Sicily. I created the work for Rivolta Femminile, a group exhibition curated by Anda Klavina and inspired by the manifesto of the late Italian feminist, activist and art critic, Carla Lonzi. Lonzi railed against the patriarchy and its domination of the art world in Italy, plastering her manifesto over the walls of buildings in Rome in 1970. 

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This third iteration of Klavina's annual exhibition features the work of fifteen female artists from mainland Italy, Sicily, Latvia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia. It includes video, painting, installation, photography, textiles and ceramic sculptures. My work - I exist in two places - is about an extraordinary link between Sicily and Latvia that I was compelled to explore because of my Latvian heritage.

Giuseppe di Lampedusa, the acclaimed Sicilian author of The Leopard, was married to Alessandra von Wolff Stamersee, a Baltic noblewoman and psychoanalyst whose family lived in Stameriena castle in the Latvian countryside. They married in Latvia in 1932, and before World War Two interrupted their lives, maintained a loving but unusual long-distance relationship through the art of letter-writing. Giuseppe lived in Palermo with his mother, and Alessandra stayed in Stameriena, only moving to Sicily after the Soviet occupation of Latvia. It was there she encouraged Giuseppe to write The Leopard, one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century. Write, she said, and everything will live as before.

Inspired by Alessandra and Giuseppe’s story, I exist in two places reflects on distance, connection and the power of the written word to both unite and express a uniquely female subjectivity. Above a dark pink dotted line that divides the gallery walls horizontally, are statements in Latvian about the transformative power of writing by Helene Cixous and Marlene Dumas, as well as Alessandra’s encouragement to write. Below the line, the quotes are repeated in Italian. The two languages are connected by images of the Latvian Austra’s tree, which symbolizes the structure of the universe and the path of the sun, and the iconic red coral of Sicily, which represents blood as the life force. The tree and the coral merge into each other, separate, yet also dependent, the coral becoming the roots of the tree, the tree growing from the coral, a symbolic reference to the nature of the relationship between Alessandra and Giuseppe. And suspended from the ceiling, two startling hot pink ovals, both transparent and mirror-like, offer a physical manifestation of existing in two places at once – here and where you are.

I exist in two places, 2026

Rivolta Femminile, group exhibition curated by Anda Klavina, featuring the work of 15 women artists with connections to Sicily.

Convent San Domenico, Trapani, Sicily

11 September - 25 October 2026

Chalk, Plexiglass, fishing line, swivels

Dimensions variable​

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Photography credits: Brigita Ozolins

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This project was made possible by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.

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