{"id":24471,"date":"2025-11-07T09:16:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T07:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lndm.devmerit.com\/radvilu-rumu-dailes-muziejus\/renginiai\/a-party-in-a-shelter-art-amidst-weapons-jurga-barilaites-exhibition-at-the-radvila-palace-museum-of-art\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T09:16:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T07:16:12","slug":"a-party-in-a-shelter-art-amidst-weapons-jurga-barilaites-exhibition-at-the-radvila-palace-museum-of-art","status":"publish","type":"renginys","link":"https:\/\/lndm.devmerit.com\/en\/radvila-palace-museum-of-art\/events\/a-party-in-a-shelter-art-amidst-weapons-jurga-barilaites-exhibition-at-the-radvila-palace-museum-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"A party in a shelter, art amidst weapons: Jurga Barilait\u0117\u2019s exhibition at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At 6 pm Thursday, 13 November, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA opens a solo exhibition by Jurga Barilait\u0117, titled <\/span>Dreams of the Living and Delusions of the Dead. Weapons and Shelters.<\/span><\/i> The artist brings together her previously produced artwork and a site-specific installation created for the event at the Radvila Palace museum on the theme of historical crises and war.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The dauntless artist of a stunning imagination\u00a0\u00a0<\/h6>\n

\u201cToday, the contemporary Lithuanian art stage is inconceivable without Jurga Barilait\u0117. Since her debut in the 90s, the artist has produced iconic pieces defining the character of Lithuanian contemporary art. She has come to contribute her strong and authentic women artist\u2019s voice to the Lithuanian visual discourse and carries on her narratives on the matters universally significant and painful with an unrelenting defiance, attractive punk candidness together with subtle empathy,\u201d says Justina Augustyt\u0117, director of the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The output from the rebellious artist strikes with the broadness of emotion and a variety of themes \u2013 from memory and conflict, to punk life style and feminism. Barilait\u0117 majored in painting at Vilnius Academy of Arts, but never since has she limited herself to a single medium. Her artistic practice combines video, performance, text and installation to produce works where the artist relies on a different means of expression from text to her own body.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She embarked on her path by critique on painting and embraced action, or gestural, painting for her early artistic statements. Among her best acclaimed early appearance is <\/span>Self-Defence<\/span><\/i> (2001, known also as <\/span>Necessary Defence).<\/span><\/i> Eighteen-minute-video shows the artist attacking the wall, punching and punching it, in boxing gloves smeared in white paint, to reveal a baby face. Her entire art vibrates with the potent imagery and shocking contrast she uses in the treatment of those uncomfortable themes bordering on tabu. The artist intensely exhibits her work in solo shows and group events in Lithuania and abroad, while this new appearance is Barilait\u0117\u2019s first solo project for the LNMA.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New exhibition \u2013 post-apocalyptic shelters and humour\u00a0\u00a0<\/h6>\n

Weapons and Shelters<\/span><\/i> is the last exhibition from the series <\/span>Dreams of the Living and Delusions of the Dead.<\/span><\/i> Like the entire project, it weaves together the eternal themes of existence and decay with the pressing present-day challenges of war and survival, punctuated by the fragments of fantastic stories and cryptic rituals. This event combines a new installation created for the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA and a kind of retrospective, which embraces the artist\u2019s production of over five past years. The <\/span>Weapons and Shelters <\/span><\/i>finalize Barilait\u0117\u2019s trilogy, which started with the <\/span>Bones and Sediment<\/span><\/i> (gallery Artiflex, 2019), continued with the <\/span>Lines and Wrinkles<\/span><\/i> (project space Atletika, 2021) and has been expanded by different individual pieces. Brought together in the rooms of the Radvila Palace, these works will emerge in a new light with new functions of ritual, memory, humour and resistance, inviting the visitors to join in a shelter party.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201eThe exhibition started with the ruminations on the experience of family women in historical crises, with thinking on occupations, persecution and the absurdity of fighting. Then my old and new ideas intertwined bringing out new colours in the artwork, sprouting with new fantasies \u2013 the dreams of the living and delusions of the dead have no real end, there is no way separating them,\u201d the artist shares her concept of the exhibition.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Visitors moving across the rooms of the Radvila Palace will be able to experience both, pre-and-post-historic realities simultaneously: these chopped heads, mysterious urns, skeletons of dragons may as well pass as elements of the beginning \u2013 or the end \u2013 of the world. In the exhibition, the artist creates an environment of a post-apocalyptic shelter, where mingled together are signs of progress or regress, where her old and newly-produced works claim equal attention as do the motifs of war, of digital gothics, of death and vitality. Barilait\u0117\u2019s take on the bitter present-day issues is infused with humour, hope and profuse energy as they appear in a vibrant and active setting the artist has designed to present her subject-matter.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201eThe exhibition manifests a singular artistic mentality and method of Barilait\u0117, political and enchanted, ironic and tragic. It was important to fulfil her vision to a detail, in order all the facets of the artis get revealed to the public,\u201d Monika Kalinauskait\u0117, curator of the event, comments on the exhibition.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Curator-and-artist guided tour of the exhibition will be held on November 15, shortly following the opening of <\/span>Dreams of the Living and Delusions of the Dead<\/span><\/i>. Information on other related events will be posted on the LNMA website and social media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The exhibition at the Radvila Palace Museum of the LNMA will run through 15 March 2026.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Team of the exhibition <\/span>Dreams of the Living and Delusions of the Dead. Weapons and Shelters\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Artist Jurga Barilait\u0117<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Curator Monika Kalinauskait\u0117<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coordinator Audrius Jera\u0161ius<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Architect Edita Valait\u0117\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coordinating Architect Aleksandras Kavaliauskas\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Graphic Designer Marija Jablonskyt\u0117<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Communication Coordinator Aist\u0117 Marija Stankevi\u010di\u016bt\u0117<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Translator Martynas Galkus\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Copyeditor Laura Patiomkinait\u0117<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Special thanks to: Exhibit Display Division of the LNMA: Vadimas \u0160amkovas, Danas Aleksa, Kazys Sli\u017eys\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n