what else should they be / kas kito jie turėtų būti
Program:
Exhibition opening: 9 July, 6 PM
Performance "Homecoming" by Zeynab Kirikou Gueye: 9 July, 7 PM
Duration of the exhibition: 10 - 30 July 2024
Address: PAMĖNKALNIO GALERIJA, Pamėnkalnio g. 1, Vilnius 01116
In their post describing the poem HELP, Vienna-based artist collective Kids Of The Diaspora wrote: (...) As a peaceful reminder of that, “We are one”. In Western culture, connected with Hippie and New Age movements, this phrase may, in a society based on individualism, resemble more naivety and simplification of socio-political issues than the unifying element at the core of all life. Despite that, this exhibition invites you to think of our existence as one humanity by invoking ambivalent states that include sentiments such as Sehnsucht (bittersweetness and longing) and nostalgia.
As art can have many purposes, two are important for us today: aesthetic pleasure and valence—the determinant of positive or negative charge. The valence can truly blossom in the realm of feeling, which is stimulated by faces, pictures, sound, music, among other events and experiences.
For this show, we chose artworks that can be perceived as distant yet familiar. Some may trigger not necessarily pleasant memories but ones seasoned with nostalgia. We seek artworks that not only evoke a confronting sense of pleasure and discomfort, but also condemn universalism in the sense of West-enforced conformity, and weave personal experiences into (dis)binding socio-political contexts.
Every piece has its story to tell, stories told by artists—stories they experienced themselves or observed in their environments, which are distant from here. We can argue that some things are not so different or almost the same; maybe our historical pasts and sociopolitical experiences share similarities. But does it matter? Different times, different places, yet we all are one.
The exhibition aims to question the sole possibility of collective memory based on historical and geographical relativism. Do we need to live in the same place and time to share our memories? All we need may be empathy. This exhibition is a memory game that intends to redefine our futures. Here, the plurality of futures is not set to separate but to connect and is based on getting to know others through empathy, which is determined by associative links of memories in an ambivalent space.
Artists:
Huda Takriti, Marko Marković, Marija Šabanović, Apple Yi Jiang, Sophie Utikal, Ramiro Wong, Sara Ghalandari, Kids of the Diaspora, Eva Balayan, Zeynab Kirikou Gueye
Curated by:
Alejandra Zapata Torres and Justina Špeirokaitė
Graphic Design by:
Supported by:
BMKÖS, Lithuanian Council for Culture
