Skuja Braden is an Latvian-American artist duo founded in 1999 by Latvian artist Ingūna Skuja (born 1965, Latvia) and American artist Melissa D. Braden (born 1968, California). Working mainly in porcelain and stoneware the pair make painted and sculpted vessels, figurative sculpture, large immersive installations and, more recently, site-specific work built into architecture. Their work draws on queer and feminist perspectives, autobiography, Buddhist thought, art history and political satire, often with humor and erotic imagery.
The name Skuja Braden refers to the collaboration rather than to either artist. The two develop each work together, and their gallery has described the duo's shared, fictive identity as a means of investigating "the absence of individual authorship".
Skuja Braden represented Latvia at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 with Selling Water by the River, an installation of more than 300 porcelain objects. Their 2020 exhibition Samsāra in Latvian Museum of Decorative Arts and Design was a finalist for the Purvītis Prize, and in 2026 they completed a permanent installation for the visitors center of the Kistefos Museum in Norway.
Artistic Practice Skuja Braden's work moves between sculpture, functional and decorative vessels, painted surfaces and room-sized installations. The Latvian National Art Museum of Art has written that their experimental hand-painting and glazing push "to the maximum the borders of what traditionally is possible in ceramics".
Exhibitions by Skuja Braden have attracted attention for the distinctive and unconventional character of the duo’s ceramic and porcelain works. They work collaboratively throughout the creative process, influencing, modifying, and supplementing each others contributions. Both have influence from initial sketches to the final painting and glazing of the finished object.
Their practice use porcelain and stoneware, both materials technically demanding, requiring carful planning and leaves limited room for error. In the same time they deliberately challenge these limitations through experimental form, expressive hand-painting and unconventional approaches.
The thematic of Skuja Braden work engages with contemporary social and political issues. The duo have identified with feminist and LGBT causes and have addressed questions of social responsibility and political change in their work.
The Latvian journalist Toms Treibergs wrote for national media outlet lsm.lv that the duo closely record what happens around them, from people and cultural events to political change and its effects on society. Their gallery, kaufmann repetto, describes their work as combining queer and feminist perspectives with autobiography, and as addressing "the patriarchal regulation of women's bodies and the commodification of female production".
Another characteristic of Skuja Braden’s work is the juxtaposition between engagement with immediate social and political realities and an interest in Buddhist thought and spirituality. Alongside works responding directly to contemporary events and physical reality, their practice includes themes of acceptance, impermanence and an understanding of the eternal and timeless.
Reviews have stressed the density of the work. Artnet news pointed to "a plethora of tiny little details waiting to be discovered", while ArtReview suggested that the Venice pavilion "just enjoy the disorientating madness". The 2025 Baltic Award recognized duos "bright, extravagant handwriting, unconventional forms, and ambitious choice of subjects". Skuja Braden has said that the work should be understandable without a curator's explanation, with "multiple layers of understanding gradually revealed" (translated from Latvian).
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