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Laima Jaunzema
Extra Mouth [She loves empty fountains]


13/12/2025 at 7pm
Pogon Jedinstvo
Trnjanska struga 34, Zagreb
Curators: Barbara Gregov, Lovro Japundžić and Lea Vene
Design: Alma Šavar
Translation: Tihana Bertek
Technical support: Marin Kovačević and Jasna Givens
Photography: Ive Trojanović

Supported by: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia,
City Office for Culture and Civil Society Zagreb, Kultura Nova Foundation

After the successful 13th edition of the Organ Vida Festival, we present the programme for the festival’s off-year, in which we continue to explore the ways in which ugliness and the grotesque manifest in contemporary art and visual culture. Once again, the weirdos take centre stage in a slightly bizarre yet touching act of rejecting perfectionism — both in relation to the body and visual culture.The solo exhibition Snake Lifter by Finnish artist Emma Sarpaniemi opens on December 12 at KO:KE space, and on December 13 at Pogon Jedinstvo Latvian artist Laima Jaunzema will present the performance Extra Mouth [She loves empty fountains]. The programme concludes with a screening of Magic Farm, a film by Argentine visual artist and filmmaker Amalia Ulman, on December 15 at Kinoteka.

The Lizard Woman, a performative project by Laima Jaunzeme, emerges as an enigmatic and lethargic provocateur who has, since 2021, evolved through a wide spectrum of alter egos. Through performative lectures, the artist reconfigures the notion of spectacle, using her body and voice as instruments to expose power dynamics, social norms, and the limits of rationality.

Driven by an inner tension between the desire to fulfill multiple aspirations and the fear of their impossibility, the work unfolds through wit and sharp satire. Humor becomes a vehicle for engaging complex and often weighty themes, rendering them both accessible and disarming. At its core, the project is conceived as a dedication to feminine, alien, and othered bodies.

Her dragged body, burning bones, and dyslexic dream of infinite knowledge articulate a fragmented yet potent subjectivity, while her dominatrix-like authority manifests as a performative force that destabilizes fixed identities.

For the performance in Zagreb, a new alter ego emerges from the poetic dungeon governed by the Lizard Woman. This time, the Murderer assumes control—drawn to empty fountains and capable of activating “extra mouths.” With her arrival, the space itself undergoes transformation, inviting the audience into a collective, participatory act of voice and presence.

 Laima Jaunzema is a choreographer whose artistic practice is grounded in the exploration of body politics. Her interest in the body as a medium is deeply shaped by the tension between the silence of intimate experience and exposure within public space, as well as by ruptures in communication, perceptual displacements, and the delayed responsiveness of political structures.

Working through interdisciplinary choreography as a method of thinking, Jaunzeme creates contexts in which bodily perception can be re-examined through heightened sensitivity and critical awareness. She graduated from SNDO School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, following earlier studies in Berlin and Denmark. Originally from Latvia, she is currently based in Riga.