Plants and Vegetal Agency in Latvian Contemporary Art

The dataset maps contemporary artists working with vegetal motifs and plant-related concepts in Latvia. Its purpose is to support research on phyto-centered aesthetics in contemporary art and to provide a structured, research-ready resource for art history, digital humanities, and cultural data analysis.

Data is collected through research in public and private archives, including the archive of Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and the archive of National Library of Latvia, as well as selected private artist archives. Additional data is gathered from exhibition catalogues, periodical publications and online art media including Arterritory and Echo Gone Wrong.

Data selection follows three criteria: (1) use of contemporary art strategies, particularly bodily and affective communication; (2) engagement with local ecological, cultural, and vernacular plant knowledge; and (3) research-based artistic practices addressing environmental transformation and challanges.

Data processing includes standardising and structuring core metadata fields such as artist names, titles of artworks, and creation dates, ensuring consistency across sources and enabling reliable search, analysis, and classification of the dataset.