Five new residents Marianna Maruyama (US/IT), Eglė Ulčickaitė (LT), Sybille Neumeyer (DE), Saulius Leonavičius (LT), Titas Silovas (LT) arrived to Nida Art Colony in February.

Eglė Ulčickaitė (LT) (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Vilnius. In 2013 she graduated from Vilnius Academy of Arts with an MA degree in painting. In 2010 Eglė studied at Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands.Since 2013 she is a PhD student in Fine Arts at VAA. Eglė has been actively participating in exhibitions since 2010. Since 2014 she has been working as a lecturer at the Painting Department (VAA). Eglė Ulčickaitė is a winner of the 16th Vilnius Painting Triennial competition.

In her works Eglė investigates the topics of time, memory and multiplicity of reality. During her residency at Nida Art Colony Eglė will keep working on her ongoing project “Parallel File-Cabinet”, and will seek creative inspirations in a particular location. She will collect found objects and photographs to create a series of collages and paintings.

Sybille Neumeyer (DE) (b. 1982) lives and works in Berlin. In her works she translates phenomena and constructs of nature, science and culture into various media: installations, moving and still images, drawings, texts and other. In order to trigger a dialogue between the viewers’ personal knowledge, memory and a bodily experience of the artwork, she fathoms spatial and temporal interrelations immanent in the image or medium, as well as the aesthetic interstices between different media.

Currently Sybille is researching the contemporary notion of nature with a focus on the intertwining of ecological, psychological and media theory questions. During her stay she will continue investigating the perception of spatial and temporal dimensions of experienced and mediated nature as well as the hybrid relations between human and nature, and will work on an aesthetic examination of the surface of the image.

Titas Silovas (LT)  (b. 1979) received his Master’s degree from Malmo Art Academy of Lund University (Sweden) in 2011. For four years he studied photography and media art (2002‒2005) and design (1998‒2002) at Vilnius Academy of Arts. Since 2013 Titas has been lecturing at Vilnius Academy of Arts. He lives and works in Vilnius.

Titas employsthe media of photography and video. The artist inquires how we can find ways to highlight what is happening or might happen next by thinking about the economic, political and cultural relationships between countries and how they affectthe situation in the region as a whole. With this research-based residency, Titas seeks to explore the limits of the natural environment and collective memory, and try to describe the fragments of the unstable condition of the situation. Also, he aims to contribute to discussions around the political issues. 

Saulius Leonavičius (LT) is an interdisciplinary artist currentlydoing an arts PhD at Vilnius Academy of Arts. His main interest is discursive and physical intervention in the identity of an artwork and the ideology of the art field. This happens with the help of appropriation of artworks and public spaces using methods of legitimation and rules which define the status quo of the art object. Currently he intended his research to combine critical design, new technologies and the concept of the pharmacon (medicine/poison). The purpose of the created models is a practical confrontation with  the dominant ideologies in a casual environment. Through design of cloths and things, the importance and capacity of the pharmacon in contemporary culture is emphasised. Designed tools can change a human being’s inner state and relationship with the environment.

In her performancesas well as publishing activities, Marianna Maruyama (US/IT) attends to the before and after moments of an event, extending the life of the activities and encounters that inform her practice. In 2013, she published Three Movements, an artist’s book dealing with the negotiation of a globally shared life after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. She published another book,Translation in the Dark, in 2014, and served as managing editor of the Kunstlicht journal issue “Translation As Method” in 2016. Maruyama moved to the Netherlands in 2012 after an extensive working period in Japan and now resides in The Hague, where she is a researcher on the invitation of the Sedje Hémon foundation.

Saulius and Marianna met in Nida Art Colony five years ago. Since then, their relationship has developed through many forms, media, texts, objects, performances, experiments, experiences, and visions. An image of a boat approaching the harbour to take us back to the city became an icon and a vector for their work in Nida. With humbleness and curiosity the artists tried to anticipate the future that was shining in the dusk on the shortest day of the year, misty and unavoidable, understanding that the only requirement that future is giving us is to be ready when it comes. There’s some feeling of fatal optimism as well as anxiety. How should we prepare for the future, how can we be ready?  Be in the port when the boat approaches. Inspired by the unpredictable future, artists try to envision ways and methods of learning, exercising creative collaboration as a method and tool.