Dana Ellyn and Matt Sesow live on Radio NABA in Rīga

Katrīna introduces the festival

In Latvian, curator Katrīna Āboltiņa introduced the second Art for Meat Tax, organized by Sandris Mūriņš, Roberta and herself, running that evening through Sunday in the cellars of Creative Factory Veldze: “a very historic, interesting place… and a little spooky.” Twenty-seven artists from seven countries, part of the White Night program. She introduced Dana and Matt as the year’s special guest artists, who came from Washington for the festival.

Five blocks from the White House

In English, Dana and Matt talked about living and painting downtown in Washington, selling their work online to collectors around the world, and walking past the White House to the post office to ship it. The bomb-sniffing dogs out front always want to see what’s in the packages; Matt called that Dana’s favorite part of the walk.

Why do we love one and eat the other?

Dana explained the work she made for the festival: not the meat tax itself, but how differently we treat animals depending on which animal it is (her words above).

Researching Latvia

Before the trip they painted from what they read about Latvia: the Bremen Town Musicians statue (the rooster, the cat, the dog and the donkey), grey peas (they had bought a bag but not yet cooked them), sprats on rye, and the discovery that dill is in everything.

The rest of the work

Other paintings in the show: a Mr. Monopoly figure surrounded by animals, about capitalism and factory farming, and a portrait of Kafka with his line about looking fish in the eye once he stopped eating them. They kept the work bright and lighthearted. They also described earlier food-culture series abroad, including a little pig standing on tapas in Barcelona, and how this time they brought every painting finished and carried them in by hand.

Painting together: DEFILED

They described their joint paintings: Matt starts a piece and captures the essence of the person, then Dana paints on top and firms up the details. They might paint something from the interview, maybe the hosts with the NABA logo behind them.

A painting for the hosts

It was Mārtiņš’s name day, traditionally marked with a black rooster, and Irbe is Latvian for partridge, so the guests promised the hosts a painting of a partridge and a black rooster.

How Dana said yes

Back in Latvian, Katrīna explained that the festival runs with no budget, as pure activism, and that this year’s theme was gluttony and overconsumption. Some artists were invited directly, Dana among them. When the organizers asked for prints, Dana wrote back: “This subject feels so important to me — we’re coming.” Katrīna described Dana as painting “realistically and expressively” and Matt as an expressionist, “a bit in the style of Basquiat.” Dana brought 21 paintings and Matt 14, all for sale, with the money going entirely to the artists.

The weekend

Katrīna ran through the program: the opening that evening, Dana and Matt’s artist talk on Saturday at 2 pm during White Night, and Sunday’s closing panel with Dana, Matt and Katrīna Tračuma on how activist art changes the world. To close, a guest asked for a song: The Smiths’ “Meat Is Murder.”