Long anticipated, we are happy to finally welcome the first three residents of NAC’s new residency/research programme Neringa Forest Architecture: artists Laura Garbštienė and Antanas Gerlikas as well asarchitect Mantas Petraitis. In November we also look forward for researcher and curator Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė, recipient of the 9th Neringa Scholarship, to conduct her work in Nida. Social activist Vika Matuzaitė is continuing working on the process based project Chicago Boys: while we were singing they were dreaming... Nida version by the artist Hiwa K, to be presented in Nida and at Tallinn’s NU Performance Festival by mid-November. Artists Liene Pavlovska and Jasmine Reimer are staying for their third residency month at NAC.

Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė lives and works in Kaunas. Bagdžiūnaitė holds a MA degree in gender studies (Central European University, Budapest) and political science (Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas). Her research interests include art and politics, the theory of critical feminism, social reproduction, and social movements. Bagdžiūnaitė is curating a residency programme DeMo (Decoding Modernity) and a general events programme at Kaunas Artists’ House Reading Room. She is a part of the editorial board of the left media platform Gyvenimas per brangus (www.gpb.lt). Bagdžiūnaitė was a co-organizer of the international conference Gender Struggle in Eastern Europe. Legacy of the Socialist Past and Contemporary Issues (October 2019, Kaunas, Vilnius) together with the DEMOS platform and Rosa Luxemburg’s fund. During her stay in Nida, Bagdžiūnaitė will work on establishing Before and After, an online archive of women workers' stories that reflects on the so-called “transition” period (1988–1998) in Lithuania. Bagdžiūnaitė was chosen by a jury of delegated members of the Neringa municipality and NAC. Her residency is funded by Neringa Municipality and NAC. 

Antanas Gerlikas lives and works in Lithuania. His solo exhibitions took place at Plunge culture centre (1999), NY Art Centre „Art in General“ (2013) and Antwerpen Art Centre „Objectif Exhibitions“ (2013), CAC in Vilnius (2016), „ P////AKT“ in Amsterdam with Laura Kaminskaite (2018), Design Fair „Grassimesse“ in Leipzig (2020). His upcoming solo exhibition will take place at the project space „Editorial“ in Vilnius (2021). During the residency Antanas Gerlikas will work on producing wooden furniture called „Cloth of the reacher“, pattern for kitchen pots and experiments with borosilicate glass.

Vika Matuzaitė is a social activist and practitioner, who connects creative and educational spaces, mostly working with social topics (human rights, social justice, activism). Main working principles that Matuzaitė leads her practices in are ‒ equity, participation that is based on transparent and clear relationship valuing every input equally and as enough. 

In collaboration with the artist Hiwa K, NAC and the Nida based women’s choir “Smiltatė”, Vika Matuzaitė is working on the Nida version of the project Chicago Boys that Hiwa K started 10 years ago in London. Chicago Boys is a pop-music revival band and a neoliberalism study group in one. They will be diving into and looking for connections between the fall of the iron curtain and a sudden arrival of neoliberalism, it’s effects on communities and local people and how they are felt to this day. 

Liene Pavlovska lives and works in Riga. She is a visual artist and scenographer. Her work is constructed around the interest in social-economic society models and collective desires resulting from them, as well as how they determine the living space of humans and other beings. She is engaged with a question of how to imagine new, inclusive future scenarios on the ruins of existing ideologies? Pavlovska is researching and using theatrical modes of expression and the experience of catharsis in the context of visual art. Her work manifests as multimedia, spatial installations. In Nida, Pavlovska will analyse the spatial politics of the Curonian Spit as a Unesco World Heritage site, continuing research she started during a HIAP residency on the Suomenlinna island of Helsinki, focusing on a defense fortress, another Unesco World Heritage Site.

Mantas Petraitis lives and works in Vilnius. His architectural practice is constructed around the interest in opportunities given by technology in changing the relationship of the city and architecture to a human being. As exhibition architect and designer Petraitis collaborated in the following  projects “Behind the White Curtain” by Darius Mikšys at the Lithuanian pavillion at the 54-th Venice Biennale (2011), exhibition “Skateboard Prayer, or Head Below the Heart" by Egle Budvytyte (2016), installation “Currents” with Lina Lapelyte at Riga international biennial RIBOCA2 (2020).

Jasmine Reimer lives and works in Berlin and Toronto. In her sculptures, installations, and performances Reimer captures transformation and hybrid forms, corporeal experiences and  excess. She researches historic and contemporary goddess symbols, and how these woven into fabrics or voiced in song-speak of kin-like relationships, ecology, spirituality, and religion. In Nida, Reimer will focus on matriarchal societies of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Eastern Europe, studying the work of archeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas as a leading reference. Reimer’s solo exhibitions were shown at Forest City Gallery in London, Ontario (2018), Georgia Scherman Projects in Toronto, and Projet Pangee in Montreal (2017).

NAC Residencies are co-funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture.