02/03 2024 Copenhagen, DK
15/09 2024 Berlin Art Week, GE
26/09 2024 Vilnius, LT
Two hours from Vilnius, hidden in the folds of a national park, lies the small village of Likančiai. Our only way to reach it was by an unsealed road, the final stretch of which narrowed into little ridges and ruts. The passing landscape was a damp pallet of brown and green, with occasional puddles of silty water spreading over the fields. To the untrained eye, they look like flood pools. Though, deeper in the mud, we would find a more complex story stir.
Lithuania has many wetlands. During the Soviet occupation, a web of drainage systems was installed to dry out the fields for agricultural use. As the regime later collapsed, the maintenance of these systems fell through, and in some cases, the trenches were blocked.
Today, water accumulates in backyards, roadsides, parking lots, and fields. While the flood pools are not lakes per se - that is what we will call them. Their sizes are shifting and undefined, and most of them are unnamed and not visible on any map. In Lithuania, bodies of water is not usually privately owned, if the lake were to be reported to the municipality, the landowners would risk losing their property to the government. But the lakes simmer in silence.
One such lake lies just outside the village of Likančiai. Last year, as we were drifting on top of it, we found ourselves spinning in a vortex of events. The water was covered in fresh green petals and under it there were rotting old trees—and leeches, so many leeches. In the middle of the lake, our oars got tangled up in water lilies that had been planted by a neighbor, while beneath us the failed drainage system sat like a scar on the lakebed. Each time we turned our heads the lake showed us something new. Every day we returned it looked slightly different.
Located in the middle of a national reserve, the surrounding landscapes are represented as static forms, considered essential, unchangeable. They are, in other words, not shaped by accidents, but through deliberate infrastructural, bureaucratic, and ideological efforts, all of which work to lock in a carefully preserved stillness. The messy, complex, and rapidly changing lake can be hard to recognize in this context. Attracting attention to it might even threaten its existence.
As a Lithuanian proverb goes if you name a cloud it becomes a lake. Without a proper framework to exist within, the lake in Likančiai has remained without a name. We see this work as an attempt to address it.
Ona Julija Lukas
Steponaityte, Vilnius LT
Iida Jonsson, Åland FI
Ssi Saarien, Åland FI
Education
MFA Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam NL (II/S/O)
Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm SWE (II/S)
BA Vilnius Academy of Arts (O)
Bio
Iida Jonsson, Ona Julija Lukas Steponaityte and Ssi Saarinen together make up an artist group working in the field of landscape depiction. They are intrested in the historical portrayal of landscapes as a symbol of national identity and heritage; as a subjective interpretation of our surrounding; as an aesthetic programme based on political dominance and the production of power; as a carrier of tangible and figurative narratives.
Their video work have previosly been presented at the 59th Venice Biennale, the Milk of Dreams (curated by Cecilia Alemani)
Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Whitechapel
KIN Museum
De Thomas
Kunstverein Amsterdam
Their work is informed by their experience from the cinema industry, where they have been working with colors, editing and cinematography.
Excerpts
Press
NR Magazine
Platform DK
LRT
Art News
Flash Art
Music and Sound
The original soundtrack for Silt is composed and produced by Alexander Iezzi The soundtrack is released on bandcamp and as the music video ‘submerger part 2&3’.
The folly is made by Zakhar Semirkhanov.
Mastering is made by Enyang Urbiks.
Support
The work is generously supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Statens Kunstfond, Frame Finland, Copenhagen Muncipality and The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.