WORDS: Gabija Purlytė
Holding the Presidency of the EU Council for the first time, Lithuania is grasping the opportunity to showcase its cultural assets throughout Europe. Ireland, who handed over the baton, is getting a fair share of the cultural feast. The exhibition, Independent Stories, an interpretation of European flags by a group of Lithuanian artists, had recently been displayed in the European Union House in Dawson street and has just opened at the Visual Arts Centre in Cork. Meanwhile, two exhibitions by Lithuanian authors are on at the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar.
The lower level gallery is given over to photographs of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, by highly-acclaimed photographer Kęstutis Stoškus. His serene black-and-white images hark back to the French pioneer of architectural photography Eugène Atget. There is a sense of patience and resolution that saturates these works, a patience needed to capture that moment when people have vacated the frame, and the angle of light is perfect. Do they look timeless? Not quite. A car, a traffic sign, plastic film covering the walls delicately place these views in a defined period. The city captured in Stoškus’s photographs seems to lead a life of its own, coexisting with its inhabitants and graciously allowing a visitor’s eye to admire it. The plaster conspicuously flaking off of the magnificent Baroque towers and vaults, the bits of graffiti on medieval walls add dignity to a city that is not polished for the eye of a tourist. Not posing, but observed from an angled street, through trees growing before the façades, rising above the wall at the end of an alley.
In the upper level gallery, taking on the challenge of exhibiting next to an established master, is the young Dublin-based artist Ieva Baltaduonytė with her new series, Unfixed. A recent graduate of Photography at DIT, she has already got herself noticed at a number of exhibitions in Ireland and abroad. This new project, she said, was presented as a work in progress. “It takes much more than a couple of months to produce a good body of work. But when this opportunity arose, I could not turn it down. This is a big step for me. So I see this as a beginning of something bigger, and I will see how it develops in a year or two.” Though native of Lithuanian city, Kaunas, Vilnius has always been her hometown. Unfixed, however, focuses on Dublin and the Lithuanian migrants who inhabit it. The two exhibitions relate to each other in an intriguing dialogue.
“I began working on the topic of migration during my second year in college,” said Ieva. “We were always told that he had to do work about what matters to us and what comes from within. My supervisor, internationally established artist and educator Anthony Haughey, had also been focusing his multidisciplinary practice around the topic of migration for probably more than a decade. He encouraged me to develop my ideas in that direction.” Unfixed, continuing to explore the same theme, is quite a fresh step in her field – a move outside of the studio, showing the people in their environment, incorporating not only portraits, but also landscapes and still lives. The city captured in her photographs is quite different from the views of Vilnius downstairs. “Stoškus photographs beautified touristy views, the most beautiful churches, the popular alleys. I wanted to get away from the centre of Dublin to show the places where people actually live.”
Portraits of people facing away from the camera are a distinctive feature in the exhibition. Ieva explained that this element came about naturally. “These back-turned portraits were quite a trend in photography of recent years. But in my case, I simply noticed that this motif repeated itself within the photographs I made while working on this project. Only a very small part of the photographs I did are presented here, but the editing process was moderately easy. This series is not as much about the migration itself but more about the subtle aspects of migratory culture such as experiences of migration, the process of assimilation and the transition – thus the idea of always being in flux, and the notion of home, especially. The idea of looking back was very significant in the conversations I had with the people. For me, these portraits visualise the notion of being unfixed – being nor here neither there, and continuously looking back.”
The video work included in the exhibition captures one of the many visits made by Ieva back to her homeland, starting in the airplane, following with the views from the bus window and feet treading on the snow in her grandparents’ city, and then back from Dublin airport. Using a technique of visual layering, Ieva aimed to achieve a near-abstract effect and transmit the rhythm of the dual journey, the transition. Laid over the video are extracts from a long conversation she had with one of her interviewees, but the chosen phrases are ones that reflect most strongly the experiences of the artist herself. “Certainly, leaving Vilnius after a visit back there used to be very painful, heart-tearing. But through these projects I’ve been working on, that involved many conversations with fellow migrants, I’ve managed to overcome this, to see my own displacement more light-heartedly. My art practice in this sense is therapeutic. My whole life is now in Ireland and I start to miss it when I go to Lithuania – as if it all has moved here gradually.”
Ieva’s feelings for this country today are positive. “I think that Ireland is changing for the better with the continuing influx of migration, I like the fact that you can meet people from all over the world, the increasingly multicultural environment. People, like birds, always seek a warmer place, a better life, this movement is natural and you cannot go against it.”
The exhibitions continue until 15 October. Admission free
First photo is courtesy of www.renata-foto.com
Second photo is of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania
Third photo is Agné, taken from the series Unfixed
