Love Letters Transcribed

Nemer transcribes intimate letters from his personal collection: love letters, farewell letters, heartfelt apologies, letters of reproach. The transcribed letters are made available to the public through various actions.

Some letters are described in a separate, handwritten promissory note that serves as a cue to future readers. Readers are required to either purchase the transcribed letter without knowing its contents, or enact some other gesture in order to gain access to a copy of the letter.

For the exhibition Slash: In Between the Normative and Fantasy, curated by Kaspars Vanags, a transcription of a letter of apology was made available to gallery visitors who wrote their names and addresses on the inside wall of the gallery toilet.


This gesture was accompanied by A Letter to the Man Who, in which another letter, written to a long-lost lover, was made available to individuals who met the artist in the park that once served as Riga's gay cruising area. Screen printed posters announced the action throughout the city centre and in the gallery. This action was repeated in London at Hampstead Heath in 2018, in an event organised by LUX. 



Three letters appeared in Le pouvoir de langage, le langage de pouvoir, a 2022 exhibition at mfc-michèle didier (Paris) about "the singular relationship that artists can have with text, writing and language.” Nemer’s promissory notes were exhibited alongside work by Jenny Holzer, Alex Cecchetti, Wesley Meuris, and Antoni Muntadas.

For an exhibition at the Crypte d’Orsay, Nemer promised to transcribe alove letter to anyone who sent him a single tear collected from their eyes and sent to his Paris address. Unable to fulfill his promise, he responded to the tears with another letter, entitled Si Une Larme Était Assez.