JUNE3-30, 2023
LOST GARDEN
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
June 3-30 Vilnius art space “GODÒ galerija” presents the solo exhibition “Lost Gardens” of artist Birutė Nomeda Stankūnienė.
Opening of the exhibition: June 3 (Saturday), 4 p.m.
The exhibition “Disappearing Gardens”, or Chasing Childhood, tells about the author’s “lost childhood garden”. He was in Antakalny, where the buildings of Vilnius University are currently located. The road to the garden started from the last trolley bus stop and continued on Žirgo street. Everything was different there: grandparents and their friends spoke Spanish, drank maté, cooked “asada” (steak), the environment smelled of coffee, taking their time and trying to regain the lost quality of life and freedom in Argentina, where they lived in exile, at least by memories or being with friends of fate. The artist says that those smells and states haunt her all her life. However, she dared to return and discover the former place of the garden only after more than fifty years.
Speaking about her childhood memories, the author also touches on a historical period that is rarely described in literature, when a part of Lithuanian emigrants who lived in Latin American countries returned to Lithuania already occupied by the Soviets in the 1950s, and as soon as they got off the ships in Odessa, they realized that the promised reality was a lie, so they had to to adapt in the new reality—the time when these people’s dreams or even their value foundations collapsed.
“Through this exhibition, I aim to familiarize the public with a little-studied topic about the traumas of returned emigrants, who suffered due to false Soviet propaganda and misinformation, dramatic adaptation and rituals of escape from Soviet reality. For me, these “gardens” were a lesson in critical assessment of the surrounding environment, with the smell of maté, I also absorbed the sense of lost but possible freedom and what is a safe childhood and the joy of life,” says Birutė Nomeda Stankūnienė.
The author uses abstract painting and collage to reveal the delicacy and multi-layered nature of this topic. To highlight the cultural differences between the Soviet Lithuania of the 1950s and the Argentinian way of life lived by people close to her, the author created works of visual art for the exhibition, integrating and interpreting household objects, patterns of textile products, colors that came from Argentina and have survived to this day.
“I dedicate this exhibition to the people who lost their “gardens”, but created a hint of freedom for me, first of all to my grandfathers Antanina and Vladas and other people of a common fate,” says Birutė Nomeda Stankūnienė.
