The Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) has dedicated its autumn exhibition season to prominent women artists and curators from the region. In early October, it opened ‘Gatherings’, a solo exhibition by Lithuanian artist and composer Lina Lapelytė, curated by Virginija Januškevičiūtė and Aistė Liuka Jonynaitė. On Friday, October 23, the CAC will open ‘Horror Desire Fantasy’, a solo exhibition by Polish visual artist and film director Agnieszka Polska. The exhibition is curated by Stockholm-born Maria Lind, a writer, educator, and director of Kin, a contemporary art museum in Kiruna, Sweden.
Ahead of the exhibition opening, the artist and curator, who have collaborated for many years, agreed to talk about the intersections of their professional paths and the upcoming exhibition, in which moving images, sound, textiles, graphics, and kinetic sculptures invite visitors to explore the relationship between humans, technology, and imagination.
Q: The CAC recently hosted an exhibition exploring relationships, asking what glues people together and what causes society to become fragmented. Since you have worked together previously, I thought it would be interesting to begin our conversation by reflecting on your own relationship.
What would you say are your glues – the things that connect your work and ways of thinking? Could you guide us through the history of your collaboration: where have you worked together before, and how did this collaboration begin?
Maria Lind: First of all, I was surprised and super pleased when Valentinas Klimašauskas asked me in May if I wanted to work on Agnieszka’s exhibition. So this is not an exhibition with a curatorial concept that has been developed over many years. From my perspective, this exhibition is primarily a celebration of Agnieszka’s work. It comes from a deep appreciation of her work, which first came to my attention around ten years ago, when I had the opportunity to meet Agnieszka in Berlin and learn more about her practice.
One of the things that captured my attention early on was the way she constructs images and how they can be captivating and disturbing at the same time. Back then, I was the director of Tensta konsthall, and we had a gallery section on our website where I invited Agnieszka to show her pieces alongside those of other artists. I also invited her to the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea in 2016. Since then, our conversation has continued.
Agnieszka Polska: I can add that my relationship with Maria feels like a very long and ongoing conversation. For me, Maria is, in many ways, a mentor who has had a big influence on my work. She has directed me in certain ways and, on several occasions, guided me towards new media, such as large-scale textile prints, which will also be presented in the show in Vilnius. Maria is extremely sharp and bold, and whatever she does always bears an urgency and weight that curves the fabric of our little universe, so that we feel like we’re at the centre of it – whether we are in Gwangju, Vilnius or Kiruna.
Q: And now, perhaps we could talk about another relationship – the one between the two of you and the CAC. I’d like to begin with a question for Agnieszka.
Agnieszka, those who follow the contemporary art scene in Lithuania may already be familiar with your work through several projects you’ve presented in the country, some of which have been hosted by the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in recent years. A selection of your video works was shown as part of Sapieha Palace’s Moving Images programme in 2025. Then, on one of the coldest days of the Lithuanian winter in 2026, your video work The New Sun was screened in the CAC’s sculpture yard. Both of these presentations were relatively brief.
Now, however, you are preparing a solo exhibition at the CAC that will be on view from October to January. Bringing together works made between 2014 and the present, it will offer the most extensive presentation of your practice in Lithuania to date. What can visitors expect from this more extensive encounter with your work? Will the exhibition include works that are new to audiences in Lithuania, alongside some they may already be familiar with?
AP: Yes, I have presented many of my video works in Lithuania in the past. Still, we somehow managed to make a selection of works that haven’t been presented here yet. The show will feature a variety of media. For the exhibition, Maria and I chose several films, some prints and textile prints, as well as kinetic sculptures. Selected video works will have their Lithuanian premiere. The most prominent work in the exhibition, Red River, is a short live-action film, shot entirely from a subjective point of view in Greece and Indonesia, with a POV similar to that of a first-person shooter game. This surreal work relates to the emotional landscape of a contemporary witness to global political events, in which accounts of violence are blended with meaningless, machine-generated content.
Another video in the exhibition, The Book of Flowers, was made three years ago. It’s a short science fiction story presenting an alternative version of the relationship between plants and humans. In my imagined history, humans used to be the main pollinators of gigantic flowers, and an intimate symbiosis existed between the plant kingdom and our species – but only until developments in technology changed the power dynamics, leading to the current status quo. It is also a film about storytelling understood as a technology.
The exhibition will also include a set of kinetic sculptures, Braudel’s Clocks, that have characteristics of both objects and moving images. Each sculpture consists of a series of digital prints set in motion in a way that resembles the hands of a common clock.
In the CAC basement, we will present The Thousand-Year Plan, a two-channel, immersive video installation that uses poetic means to talk about the electrification of the Polish countryside in the years following the Second World War. The film links this process to current technological expansion.
Apart from this, there is a big project that will extend beyond the CAC walls and into the city. Called Wayward Pigeon, it is a project that Maria and I realised together for the Timișoara Biennale. It is a very poetic project that’s quite dear to me, dedicated to a very special homing pigeon.
Q: Maria, this is your first time presenting curatorial work at the CAC. What drew you to the institution, and why did it feel like the right context for presenting Agnieszka’s work?
ML: The CAC has been one of my favourite institutions since I first went there in the mid-1990s, in the context of my longstanding interest in Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, which is my home turf. Most of my friends in the 1980s went to the Mediterranean – I went there a few times as well – but my strong curiosity was towards Eastern Europe, its history and geopolitics. I travelled there before the fall of the Berlin Wall, including to the Baltic States, although Estonia was the only one I visited before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then, early in the 1990s, I went to the other Baltic countries. If you’re working with and engaged in art at the same time, of course you come across the CAC. Since then, it has remained one of my favourite institutions. It has such a fascinating history; it is a beautiful building, and its location in the centre of Vilnius, in an area that formed part of the wartime ghetto, brings its own tragic history. It is a place where important things have been happening for many decades.
Regarding Agnieszka’s exhibition, the invitation came from Valentinas, the director, to curate a show of Agnieszka’s work – he’s the mastermind behind it, and together with Agnieszka I’m the executor of the plan, which I’m happily doing. There are many exceptions, but in general, the most interesting art, as far as I’m concerned, is made in societies undergoing transformation: places where things are not always the same and stable, but where people have to go through changes and challenges, often difficult ones. This is true of artistic practices and also of institutional work, so everything, in a way, follows my interests. The stars were in the right constellation in the sky!
Q: Now let’s turn to the exhibition we’re all looking forward to – ‘Horror Desire Fantasy’. The title brings together three powerful words, the first of which is horror – a term that immediately evokes a genre in itself. Since one of the main mediums you work with is video, horror also brings to mind a rich cinematic tradition, one that often overlaps with fantasy and explores imagined worlds, uncanny experiences, and encounters with the unknown. Could you tell us a bit more about that choice? Should visitors expect horror in the exhibition, and if so, in what sense?
ML: It was my proposal to use this title, and I drew the words from Agnieszka’s works. As a curator, it is important for me to start with the artworks. In this case, even the title came from the artworks.
AP: The words come from The Book of Flowers, the film that presents storytelling in a technological context. The audience can definitely expect elements of horror in the show. I think that, in contemporary times, it is not truthful to the universe to make a show without an element of horror. But there is also a lot of desire and fantasy. And I don’t think that these terms – horror and fantasy – are actually oppositional. In the exhibition, they are very much bound together. There is horror of the abundance of media, as well as desire that comes from that same abundance. And there is fantasy that relates to poetry – poetry as a key to overcoming horror. Fantasy can be deceptive. But we also need deception, and we need imagination. We need poetic imagination to overcome the horror.
Q: Agnieszka, in your films and installations, sound and visual elements often create a very immersive experience. How do you approach creating this emotional and sensory dimension of your works?
AP: Of course, this dimension depends on the space, on the spatial context of the work. I think we’re extremely lucky to have this amazing, beautiful space, which is very unique on a European or even global scale. So I feel like a lot has already been done for us. We don’t have to construct this feeling from scratch: any visitor to the CAC is already immersed in serenity coupled with melancholy. We would like to enter this space with a minimal architectural intervention because the space simply doesn’t need it.
Many of my works involve creating sound and visual landscapes, and the body of the viewer is a very important element of this structure. For example, in the exhibition we will have one video installation where the viewer will be positioned between the two screens. It won’t be possible to see both screens at the same time, but the sound from both channels will overlap, creating a space that is sometimes harmonious, sometimes discordant. While I like to immerse the viewer in my works in order to create a strong affective response, I also include moments of dissociation so that no one leaves the room feeling manipulated.
Q: Maria has described your works as reflecting on the individual and their social responsibility. What questions about responsibility are most important to you today? How do you approach the relationship between individual responsibility and global processes?
ML: That’s a very big question. The obvious answer is to say that one has to respond in a multitude of ways. The bottom line for me is to try to think about the effects of what I’m doing on other people, and to create space for the things we talked about before – to try to generate space for poetic imagination. This is desperately needed in times like ours.
AP: I also think it is a very big question. It is difficult to answer such a question without being overly simplistic: I really feel like I have dedicated my whole practice to trying to find answers. Do we have individual agency? Are we victims, are we perpetrators? At what point in history did this responsibility start?
I would say that, as artists, as well as individuals, we should first be aware of what is happening around us, and this is the most basic responsibility. A figure that appears in the show, the Wayward Pigeon, could be a poetic role model here: a messenger who decides to be selective about which messages they deliver.
ML: I would like to add that, for a long time, it has been very important for me not to stay only with the questions of what and why, but also how. How do we do something? I am currently the director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Giron/Kiruna, in the middle of the Swedish side of Sápmi in the Swedish Arctic. The question is obviously about much more than whom we are inviting and what artworks they will show. How are they shown? How are we treating them? Are we only making group exhibitions dealing with certain issues? Or do we actually try to stay with the question by working with issues and topics over several years, with a particular group of people? How do we try to become embedded in the locality? At the same time, we have to ask: how do we contribute to the development of the discourse of art, and of the development of art itself, in a place that is considered remote by many people, where the population is fairly small – 23,000 to be precise, in the municipality of Kiruna. Part of the answer, from my side, would be to hold on to the question of how, which goes hand in hand with not accepting the status quo.
Q: Your works often explore how images, language, and narratives shape our understanding of reality. What interests you about the relationship between technology, imagination, and the way we perceive the world?
AP: I’m very much interested in the flow of affect in societies. And, as an artist, I’m working with affect, creating affective responses in the viewers. I see cultural entities such as stories, artworks, images, and pieces of music as units of stored emotions that circulate and change our societies in the process of a never-ending, perpetual redefinition of what it means to be human.
These are technological tools: for example, a story is a basic technology for storing information; an image is a technology of ‘making whole’ our fragmented perception of the world. In The Book of Flowers, stories prepare society for the introduction of technological breakthroughs that change human physiological processes: thanks to this memory-extending tool, we are able to thrive as a society. At the same time, like any technology, the story might be used against its creators, captivating them to the point of rendering them non-reactive.
Then there is the whole context of contemporary affective media, which operate as a new infrastructure for circulating these ancient technologies – an infrastructure that is often controlled by agents who operate through environmental destruction and societal collapse. As Stafford Beer put it, ‘The purpose of a system is what it does.’
Q: If ‘Horror Desire Fantasy’ can be understood as a journey through different states of perception, what kind of experience would you like visitors to leave the exhibition with?
ML: I wouldn’t want to script that. It’s a bit like having a recipe: you describe the ingredients, how they come together, and then have some expectations of the result. But how this is experienced by the people enjoying the meal is left to them.
AP: I would say that it’s also impossible to plan. This is part of the excitement of making a show: you cannot entirely plan how it will be experienced.
Q: Maria, in your description of the exhibition, you write that it will invite viewers into the streets of Vilnius, allowing them to learn from a micro-event – that of the wayward pigeon. Does this mean that the exhibition will extend beyond the walls of the CAC, and could you tell us more about how this city-wide element connects to the exhibition as a whole?
ML: Surely the inhabitants of and visitors to Vilnius are familiar with pigeons. I noticed quite a few of them behind the CAC when I was there in June. I would encourage all of those people to look out for pigeons, but in images. We expect to have posters, stickers and at least one banner featuring this particular Wayward Pigeon, which will hopefully attract people’s attention and evoke some curiosity. We’re hoping to make a website that tells the story, and there will also be an image of the pigeon at the CAC. And maybe, Agnieszka, you want to fill in a little bit about what’s special about the Wayward Pigeon?
AP: Wayward Pigeon is, as I mentioned, a messenger that chooses which messages to deliver. For quite a while, I have been interested in this figure of a messenger, and not only in this work. I think that’s because, in some ways, an artist is a messenger as well. I think that it is also quite an important figure in the context of contemporary technological reality, which is closely related to the flow of information. So the Wayward Pigeon might not look different from other pigeons, but it is a special pigeon that is not bound by borders and psychological restrictions. It’s a figure that also never treats its mission as complete. Its project is always open.
Q: Since the exhibition presents video works, which require time and attention from the viewer, I’m curious about how you think about the relationship between the moving image and the audience. Do you aim to create a situation or environment in which visitors are encouraged to slow down, stay with the works, and experience them at their own pace?
This question also connects to a broader condition of contemporary life, where many of us are constantly rushing, multitasking, and navigating increasingly fragmented attention. With social media and digital platforms reshaping the way we encounter and consume images, how do you think about creating works that invite a different, more focused way of looking?
ML: I don’t think artists should make work to please viewers. Artists need to make the work that needs to be made. If we follow the logic that we have to cater to our viewers, then we would have a pretty boring and homogeneous field of art. Just think about something that has been so important to so many artists for at least 20 years: the work of the hand, manual labour, materiality, learning old crafts – in the midst of this explosion of new technology, AI, you name it. You have to go with the flow.
AP: I agree with Maria. But I also want to add that the relationship between an artist and a viewer is based on interdependence and self-regulation. As artists, we are always restricted by the viewer’s knowledge. While the work should not please the viewer, if we want to establish a conversation with the audience, the work has to be designed to meet the viewer’s communicational needs.
But there is a special reason why viewers visit art institutions or seek out art. They are not looking for the same experience as when they are looking at social media on their phones.
On the opening day of ‘Horror Desire Fantasy’, Friday, October 23, at 6 p.m., the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) will host a conversation between artist Agnieszka Polska and curator Maria Lind. The opening programme will continue with events on Saturday: on October 24, at 3 p.m., the artist and curator will lead a guided tour of the exhibition, followed at 5 p.m. by a lecture by Agnieszka Polska, ‘Objects and Narratives in Changing Environments’, in the CAC Reading Room. All events will be held in English. Full programme: click here