“And twist about the past your thoughts
Like some parasitic vine
Which on an ancient structure’s walls
Its widely-scattered arms will twine.”
Adam Mickiewicz, Forefathers’ Eve, The Living Dead
Translated by Charles S. Kraszewski
fall began with thoughts on the in-between, the horror and the bounty of an unnamed sense of the present. In five artworks, the artists invite us to enter or observe the relationship between material and human modes of being, between generations, emptiness and filler, something synthesised and homogenous.
When young writer Adam Mickiewicz began writing the poem Forefathers’ Eve two hundred years ago, he experienced the destructive force of imperialism, personal losses, heartaches, and the pressures of market and success. He transferred collective and personal anxiety to the character of the spectre. The artworks are ghosts, too. Like the Living Dead in the poem, they are mediators between different times and spaces – forever the same age, trapped in an endless moment, and drifting through the walls of the old house. fall reminds us that it’s not only seasons that recur.
Kotryna Markevičiūtė and Ona Juciūtė
The exhibition will be open until January 5, 2025, at the Northern Gallery on the first floor of the Contemporary Art Center’s branch at the Sapieha Palace (L. Sapiegos St. 13, Vilnius). Opening hours of the Sapieha Palace: Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri 12:00–20:00, Sat 11:00–19:00, Sun 11:00–18:00. Admission to the exhibition is free.
JCDECAUX AWARD 2024 PARTICIPANTS
ELENA LAURINAVIČIŪTĖ is an artist from Anykščiai who currently lives and works in Vilnius. In 2024, she completed her Master’s at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The artist creates experimental ceramic wind instruments. Their sharp edges cut the invisible air and thus transform it into humming and whistling sounds, from which the artist forms three-dimensional soundscapes of air vibrations. Elena explores the relationship between sound and space, actualising the sonic heritage of clay whistles and connecting past and present with ceramic tools.
KAMILĖ PIKELYTĖ is a visual artist who lives and creates in Reykjavik and Vilnius. She uses found footage and physical remains in her work. In her installations and performances, the artist examines humanity’s dominance and the tendency to annihilate non-human life forms. In questioning the systematic labelling of certain things as ‘dirty,’ Kamilė explores the masking of inconvenient truths in such a way.
EGLĖ RUIBYTĖ is a visual artist and graphic designer who combines these fields and thus searches for meaning in particularly standardised global processes. She graduated from graphic arts studies at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts and then studied typography and sculpture at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts (HFBK). Delving into industrial technologies and looking for functional-emotional metaphors, Eglė constructs seemingly mass-produced objects partly by handiwork. In this way, the author deliberately allows mistakes to occur, which speak of contradictory humanity in the industrial machine.
ONA BARBORA ŠLAPŠINSKAITĖ is an artist and educator who lives in Vilnius, where she is currently studying for an MA in Sculpture at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The artist creates installations in which personal memories, family stories, and political contexts unfold and sometimes create conditions for different communities to meet. Recently, she has been rethinking the role of ‘ghosts’ in her work, both on personal and political levels. In using auto- and biographical facts and weaving them into fictional stories, Ona Barbora tries to highlight the influence of history and ideological heritage on past, present and future identities.
MANTAS VALENTUKONIS is a painter who lives and works in Kaunas. In 2023, he completed his BA in Painting at the Faculty of Kaunas of the Vilnius Academy of Arts. This year, he organised a personal exhibition, Apparitions, at the Drifts Gallery in Vilnius and also curated the group exhibition Tarpinės gliaumos / Intermediate Glooms at the Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre. The artist has presented his work in group exhibitions in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Klaipėda.
JCDECAUX AWARD 2024 CURATORIAL TEAM
KOTRYNA MARKEVIČIŪTĖ is a curator of art and educational activities and a researcher. In her professional activity, she combines interests broadly encompassing contemporary art, cultural education, and sociology. Markevičiūtė is interested in the interdisciplinary interaction between these fields, both in creating new experiences of art and cultural education and in reflecting on the relationship of contemporary art with established ways of knowing (science) or forms of organising social life (politics). Markevičiūtė currently works in the education department of the National Gallery of Art and collaborates with other Lithuanian cultural institutions on curatorial and educational projects. In 2018-2020, she was a curator of residencies and exhibitions at the Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies and Education, where she co-curated the exhibitions Jonas Mekas: Let Me Dream Utopias (2019, Rupert) and Other Rooms (2020, Rupert, LDS Gallery).
ONA JUCIŪTĖ is an artist, curator, and stage designer based in Vilnius. She has held solo exhibitions at Editorial Project Space (Vilnius) and the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry (London). Her work has also been presented in group exhibitions at MOCAK Museum (Krakow), Istanbul Biennial Parallel Programme, Kaunas Artists’ House, and multiple institutions in Vilnius, including the Contemporary Art Centre, National Gallery of Art, Atletika, Rupert, Swallow Project Space, and others. Juciūtė participated in residency programmes at AIR Niederosterreich in Austria, Stiftung Kuenstlerdorf in Germany, and Diyalog Istanbul in Turkey. In 2021, her sculptures became part of the permanent collection of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. Juciūtė has been awarded the JCDecaux Prize 2016 and a prize founded by Lithuanian-born American artist Aleksandra Kašuba.
JCDECAUX AWARD 2024 JURY
REBECCA ACKROYD is a British artist who studied in London and currently lives and works between London and Berlin. She has had solo exhibitions at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover (DE); Fondaco Marcello, Venice (a Collateral event of the Biennale di Venezia) (IT); MAC, Lyon (FR); and Fondazione Pomodoro, Milan (IT). Ackroyd has taken part in the Lyon Biennial and exhibitions at Mead Gallery, Warwick (UK); Capc Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (FR); Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds (UK); and Aïshti Foundation, Beirut.
JL MURTAUGH (Liam) is the curator of residencies and public programmes at the Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies, and Education. An artist, curator, writer, and consultant originally from Chicago, he is now based in Vilnius.
Recent projects with Rupert include Wherever we are We are what is missing (with Goda Palekaitė), Redux codex, Earth Bonds II (with Viktorija Šiaulytė), Mutual Empathies (with Goethe-Institut Vilnius and Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne (DE)), and the Articulations programming series.
Since 2014, he has also organised more than sixty international projects under the alias of Syndicate, a liquid, nomadic contemporary art platform. Formerly headquartered in London, Cologne, and Los Angeles, Syndicate produces exhibitions, events, and publications with its long-term collaborators throughout Europe and North America. Liam was formerly the artistic director of Autarkia, Vilnius from 2020-23, and director of Tenderpixel, London from 2012-14.
SATU OKSANEN is a Finnish curator based in Helsinki. Currently she works as a curator of collections at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art / Finnish National Gallery, where her focus is on collecting, researching, and mediating contemporary art in an institutional framework. Her main interest lies in the constant negotiation between contemporary art practices, museum institutions, and permanent collections. In recent years, she has collaborated with artists such as Essi Kausalainen and Alma Heikkilä, commissioning performative and site-specific works for Kiasma’s collections.
Her most recent project is the collection exhibition Feels Like Home, with her next collection display scheduled to open in February 2025 at Kiasma. Previously, she worked at the Helsinki Art Museum where she curated public space commissions and temporary exhibitions, among other projects. Oksanen holds an MA in Art History from the University of Helsinki and a BA in Design. She has participated in residencies at ISCP in New York and Rupert in Vilnius.
The JCDecaux Award is an annual cycle of exhibitions initiated in 2016 by the Contemporary Art Centre and the JCDecaux to promote the artwork of emerging Lithuanian artists, raising its profile in Lithuania and abroad, and expanding the public interest in contemporary art. Each year, the project’s curators receive applications through an open call, evaluate them and select participants to receive financial and institutional support for the creation and presentation of new artworks. The one-off award of €4,000, granted by the JCDecaux, is awarded by an international jury to one participating artist or collective based on the originality, relevance and artistic expression of their artwork. The public are also encouraged to express their preference. The artist most appreciated by the public will be given the opportunity to present their project within the JCDecaux OOH network of public advertising spaces.
