The monumental sculpture “Taming the Beast with the Heart” in Venice at “Personal Structures” (2026)

Photos: Igors Jasāns

Taming the Beast with the Heart confronts power as an inherited condition of being. The bear—an archaic totem of European imagination—emerges not as an external enemy but as an internal force: instinct, memory, latent violence, and potential care.

The monumental sculpture addresses one of the fundamental questions of humanity: how to restrain the force that resides within human beings themselves.

Monumental yet restrained, the figure is held by chain and weight. These are not tools of oppression imposed from outside, but structures generated by civilization itself—systems that bind instinct without erasing it. Power here is neither condemned nor celebrated; it persists as a tension that demands continuous negotiation.

Aigars Bikše comments: “The bear serves as a symbol for a conversation about ancient and fundamental matters that, when connected to the heart, create powerful contrasts. It is an exchange between a kind of strength with which we fight for our existence, and at the same time the fragility of existence at a moment when that strength can quickly turn into aggression, which can even be destructive”

The “heart” fractures the logic of domination. Control is displaced from authority toward empathy. Strength is not abolished but inhabited—carried with responsibility rather than unleashed as force. Bikše proposes that power should be understood not through the lens of dominance but through responsibility. The sculpture reflects on the possibility of controlling power through empathy, awareness and cultural structures.

Carved in wood, marked by grain and mass, the sculpture refuses monumentality as permanence. It suggests that power and its restraint unfold through time, vulnerability, and historical repetition. The visible grain and physical weight of the material turn the sculpture into a reflection on force as something shaped simultaneously by nature and by human culture.

Personal Structures is the biennial contemporary art exhibition organised and hosted by the European Cultural Centre Italy in Venice. The 8th edition will run from 9 May until 22 November 2026 in parallel with La Biennale. In a society marked by fractures, displacement, and accelerated transformation, Personal Structures – Confluences emerges as a space for encounter. It is a place where artistic practices, cultures, and disciplines intersect, contaminate one another, and generate new possibilities for coexistence. In the group show, visual artists, photographers, sculptors, performers, universities, and artist collectives, both established and emerging, bring a multitude of perspectives to the historical venues of Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora, and Marinaressa Gardens.

From 9 May until 22 November 2026 the sculpture will be displayed at an exhibition “Personal Structures” at Venice in Marinaressa Gardens.

Participation in the exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the AJ Power company group.

Currated by fonds Mākslai Vajag Telpu