The exhibition will open at KADIST Paris on 11 October 2024 and at Palais de Tokyo on 16 October 2024.
‘Les Frontières sont des animaux nocturnes / Sienos yra naktiniai gyvūnai’ is a project co-organized by KADIST Paris, the Palais de Tokyo and the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius.
The exhibition presents intergenerational Lithuanian artists together with a collective of cultural agents coming from “post-socialist” countries, including some members based in the Parisian area. It stems from the present geopolitical turmoil caused by the Russian war in Ukraine.
Two years after the full scale invasion started, what normality is possible in the vicinity of the conflict, while we witness history tending to repeat itself? The exhibition points at stories of that region that until recently were overshadowed by power discourses both from the East and the West. Once told, can they reshape established narratives of the past and the present?
The exhibition focuses on the threat of invasion, the haunting ghost of the past occupation, and persistent systems of beliefs and languages that carry resilience. Simultaneously presented at the Palais de Tokyo and KADIST through different artworks, the common group of artists uses imagination, poetry, and ancestral wisdom as political tools, as well as more factual approaches to read through complex colonial histories, realities, and envision the future.
The exhibition is part of the Lithuanian season in France 2024. The Season is organized by the Lithuanian culture Institute and the French Institute in Paris
CURATORIAL TEAM
NERINGA BUMBLIENĖ is a curator and author. Among areas of her interest is contemporary art that sensitively reflects upon the challenges of the current world and helps imagine the future within and outside of human made structures including language. She is often working with projects that are constituted of new productions and is willing to experiment inviting artists into situations that lie beyond their usual realm of practice.
She is the artistic director and curator of the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art with its second edition to be held in 2025 and was the curator of the Pavilion of Lithuania at the 59th Biennale di Venezia in 2022. Since 2014, she has worked as a curator at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Throughout her career, she has curated numerous contemporary art projects from large-scale international group exhibitions and performance festivals, including co-curating Baltic Triennial 13 in 2018, to solo presentations of emerging and established artists, including Robertas Narkus in 2023, 2022 and 2020, Pierre Huyghe in 2022, Michael Rakowitz in 2020, Alejandro Cesarco in 2019, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané in 2018, Liam Gillick in 2017 and 2014, et al.
ÉMILIE VILLEZ is a Paris-based curator. Her practice centres on artistic and curatorial methodologies as well as on the construction of institutions and institutional ecosystems. With decentralization as her key method, she looks to create relationships between artists from different generations and geographical backgrounds in order to find ways of apprehending the contemporary world.
In 2024, she curated “Des lignes de désir”, an exhibition of work by the 28 graduates of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris whose work had been commended by that year’s jury. Together with Neringa Bumblienė, she is co-curating an exhibition that will take place at the Palais de Tokyo and at KADIST in Paris this autumn as part of the Saison de la Lituanie.
As director of the KADIST Foundation in Paris from 2013 to 2023, she developed a programme of solo and group exhibitions in Paris and at international partner institutions. She also contributed to the enrichment of the foundation’s collection by overseeing the acquisition of work by emerging and recognized artists.