EXHIBITION // Sabīne Vernere "Femme Forte"

Femme Forte
Sabīne Vernere
Curated by Maria Helen Känd
12.2.2026 — 11.4.2026
 We open the exhibition Femme Forte on 12 February at 18.00 at Kogo Gallery.
In her upcoming solo exhibition, Femme Forte, the artist Sabīne Vernere – previously known for working primarily with black pigments – turns toward vivid colour, taking inspiration from the sun itself.
The colours of sunrise and sunset emerge from the interaction between short and long light waves and the Earth’s atmosphere. In Vernere’s new works, this optical phenomenon becomes a metaphor for women’s voices and histories. When the sun sinks below the horizon in the evening, its light enters the atmosphere at a more acute angle and, so, must travel a longer distance to reach the Earth’s surface. As a result, blue light scatters and disappears, while the red light remains. In Femme Forte, a light blue tone marks the more delicate forms of the feminine as the saturated colours of twilight symbolise voices growing stronger through resistance.
Through this luminous palette, Vernere invites us to imagine empowering examples of women’s self-realisation – stories that are scarce in recent Baltic history. There have undoubtedly been women who led successful creative and professional lives despite the obligations and constraints placed upon them. Yet these successes often came at the expense of personal well-being. Many women from the past century ended their lives alone and in poverty or were worn down by political repression or illness. In contrast, the representations of the female in Vernere’s new works are imbued with an energy captured in the braided anatomy of joints and tissues and ready to burst out. Alongside them, enlivened figures are already moving, striving forward and upward. And there are also supple, tender hand- or budlike forms tentatively exploring the surface.
Read the curator's text in full: https://www.kogogallery.ee/en/exhibitions/femme-forte/
Sabīne Vernere (b. 1990, Kuldīga, Latvia) is a Latvian artist living in Riga. She is known for her expressive Indian ink paintings depicting anthropomorphic, gender-fluid beings. There is a strong presence of beauty, sensuality and emotion in the artist’s works, but also disturbance and violence, a juxtaposition that correlates with the complexities of the dynamics between humans and nature. Vernere works as the head of the experimental art space Pilot at the Art Academy of Latvia. She holds a doctorate in Visual Art and Design from the Art Academy of Latvia (2025).
Sabīne Vernere is represented by Kogo Gallery.
Maria Helen Känd is a curator and critic whose work engages with socio-psychological themes, inviting audiences to reflect on the subtle agreements that underpin social structures and the complexities of identity. In recent projects, she has adopted a more intuitive curatorial approach, creating poetic constellations of works by artists who share formal affinities and explore mythological and archetypal motifs. Känd currently works as a project manager at Tallinn Art Hall and was previously a curator and project manager at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM). In 2021, she was awarded a scholarship in art criticism by CCA Estonia and the Estonian Association of Art Historians and Curators.
The exhibition is funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia and the City of Tartu.
Kogo Gallery
Kastani 42, Tartu
Wed–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16
www.kogogallery.ee/en/