Nida Art Colony per la Lituania

Per la Lituania sarà il collettivo Nida Art Colony

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Nida Art Colony will be representing Lithuania at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. This time the Colony will is going to present Sun and Sea, an opera-performance by Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte, and Rugile Barzdžiukaite.

Initially, the creation of Sun and Sea was developed during the residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2016. At the end of the residency, the project was presented as a micro-opera version at Palermo gallery in Stuttgart. In the autumn of 2017, it was presented at the National Gallery of Arts in Vilnius and this year the artists were awarded with Borisas Dauguvietis Earring for innovation and originality.

Sun & Sea’s setting is a makeshift beach area, set up indoors to resemble as closely as possible a real-life, crowded beach: like a counter-monumental, anti-baroque theatre.

Contemporary society, a major character in the performance, is embodied by a number of performers in their bathing suits, lying on the ground looking up, while the audience looks down at them from above. In an apparent show of frivolity and laziness, the seaside sets the stage for the ominous topics addressed by the songs with the same nonchalance: complex subjects unfold easily, attractively. Like putting on sunglasses to witness a star dying.

In her recent book, Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway suggests that the worst position to take in what she calls ‘a time of trouble’, plagued as it is by extinction and climate change and so much else besides, is that of ‘depressed nihilism’: in the face of overbearing complexity, of an ocean of headlines, a repetition of alarmist clichés, the mind retreats, folds in, becomes incapable of conceiving of possible action, or of believing in the consequentiality of one’s individual life, or active life.

Haraway would say: “It matters what worlds world worlds”. This phrase, seemingly so esoteric, means simple things: it is time for the sciences to recognise the arts and humanities, and for the arts and humanities to do the same back. Only through collaboration and exchange, through new imaginaries and new forms are we perhaps likely to set the stage for more interspecies and ecological re-thinks of this fragile planet. It is key, Haraway argues, for worlds once apart (science and humanities, social sciences and geology… the list goes on) to reconnect.

The authors of opera-performance Sun and Sea are Rugile Barzdžiukaite, Vaiva Grainyte, and Lina Lapelyte

The curator Dr Lucia Pietroiusti (London) is the Public Programmes Curator at the Serpentine Galleries in London.

The commissioner of the pavillon Prof Jean-Baptiste Joly (Stuttgart) is the Founder and Artistic Director of Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Producer Dr Rasa Antanavičiūtė (Vilnius) is the Executive Director of VAA Nida Art Colony.

Museum - Lithuanian Pavilion

The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts have the pleasure to invite you to the opening of

Dainius Liškevičius’ project MUSEUM 

in the Pavilion of Lithuania at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia

on Wednesday, 6 May 2015, at 5 pm with the artist’s performance

The Lithuanian pavilion and the opening ceremony will be in the garden of the Palazzo Zenobio, Fondamenta Soccorso, Dorsoduro 2596, Venezia

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Museum, which originated in 2012 as a black cube intervention in the Lithuanian National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (formerly the Museum of the Revolution of the Lithuanian SSR), has arrived in Venice as an artist-created institution which can tell and do what ordinary museums cannot. The artist’s ways of storytelling and rhetoric simulate the phenomenon of a museum itself, with its rules and methods. In this way, a discursive space with overlapping subjective and objective interpretations of time is created. As the Lithuanian national pavilion, Museum seemingly alludes to the idea of the curator Okwui Enwezor that a national pavilion is “the most anachronistic exhibition model”. At the same time, it offers a relevant model of conduct for today’s world, full of national and geopolitical conflicts.

The multi-layered collection that has been put together by the artist works as an elliptical time loop. It simultaneously takes us back to the recent Soviet past, questions the present, and projects our anxieties on to a future that is full of cultural and geopolitical tensions. Museum is essentially a one-off piece of artistic research, but it is not only relevant in exploring the depths of the Soviet totalitarian regime. It is also a possible model for dealing with present-day hegemonic powers, and their impact on the public discourse and the freedom of the artist. We can also interpret Museum as a new kind of patriotism, which rethinks the new democracies’ national myths, and their attempts to create legitimacy for a contemporary nation-state. 

In his vision of Lithuanian (art) history, revamped with subtle irony, the artist offers an unexpected version of the archaeology of objects. Here, every object has both a personal and a collective history that conveys the signs of the times, and allows us to travel in time. Within the space of Museum, Liškevičius’ own life story intertwines with those of dissident revolutionaries and idealised cultural figures (such as Jean-Paul Sartre), further erasing the thin line between subjective and objective forms of storytelling.

Tours to Museum will be given by Lithuanian, English (and sometimes Italian) speaking guides, who will help viewers to find the intersecting multi-linear narratives in it. The printed English guide will help to uncover the stories behind the three revolutionary personalities and some of the exhibits. There is also a book Museum (2013), with full commentaries on the project and extensive illustrations.

Commissioner/Curator of the Lithuanian Pavilion dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius

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Dainius Liškevičius (born 1970 in Kaunas, lives and works in Vilnius) is one of the most prominent Lithuanian artists, who started his artistic career with Lithuania’s independence. With the incredible socio-political changes since 1990, his creative work has evolved through very different media and styles. Performativity and the fluctuating identity of the artist, both as a theme and as a form, are among the main keywords describing his work. The artist studied sculpture and later postgraduate studies at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and is an active participant in national and international shows. www.liskevicius.lt

Lithuania's representation at Venice in 2015 is organised by the Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts. 

Check www.museo.lt to find out more about the Lithuanian pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.

The Lithuanian pavilion will run daily (except Tuesdays) from 7 May until 30 September, 10am to 6pm.

For additional information, please contact the producer of the pavilion Ms. Daina Pupkevičiūtė daina@nidacolony.lt

The main sponsors of the pavilion are the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

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The bi-annual international art exhibition la Biennale di Venezia has taken place in the Giardini and the surrounding city since 1895. This year, the 56th international art exhibition is scheduled to be open to the public from 9 May to 22 November. The preview days are on 6-8 May.

Vilnius Academy of Arts is the only university-level state institution for higher education in art in Lithuania. The Nida Art Colony is a department of Vilnius Academy of Art, and runs residencies and educational and art production programmes in the resort town of Nida on the coast of the Baltic Sea.

www.museo.lt