Teaching period: 

May 21–25, 2023

Teachers: Ph.D. Dr. Jovita Aukštikalnytė-Varkulevičienė, Andrius Zakarauskas, Petras Lincevičius

ECTS: 2 ECTS

Level: BA & MA 

Participants: 

Sergei Saprykin, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia (EKA), Tallinn, Estonia.

Aino Seppa, Nuutti Maikola, Emilie Kanervo, Julia Masalin, Arts Academy at Turku University Of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland.

Ema Jacobsen, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.

Chiara Salmini, Zsofia Boda, Malmoe Art Academy, Malmoe, Sweden.

Course description

“Landscape as interior" is a visual project that invites you to think through the images you create and is open to interpretations both in the classical form of painting and by rejecting the usual "rectangle" form of an artwork. During this project, students will use a different visual language to explore Nida as a multi-layered narrative that changes through the interaction of urban and natural spaces. During this project, not only painting will take place in specific places, but also painting at different times of the day. Night painting will be carried out under non-natural light sources.

The purpose of these activities is to explore the landscape of Nida as an interaction of natural, social, cultural, and technological tensions in search of the relationship between closed and open spaces.

Discussions and presentations of creative works will be organized during these practical sessions. During them, the participants will present their artistic research analyzing the sensitive nature-human relations. Discussions on the topic of ecology will help students understand the multi-meaning of the area, interpret the project theme in various forms and experience a variety of creative solutions. All project participants (students together with participating teachers) will create paintings, drawings, and mixed media works using the authentic landscape as a source of creative expression and will present them at a public exhibition in the spaces of the NAC.  

Nida is a closed and open space at the same time. It is a living space, surrounded by natural and artificial boundaries, which form a unique horizon, but also "close" it, offering new possibilities of perception. Nida's images appear in a twofold sense. One, a natural environment opens up with a color, structure, and special light due to its geographical and natural location. Secondly, it is the urban space, which is a field of certain activities and living conditions. Therefore, we can talk about cultural and social spaces, which, like different interiors, provide different forms of creativity. These different environments are related, which presuppose specific, unique creative relationships: from individual to communal creativity, from plein-air to conceptual expression, from drawing to land art, etc. In other words, the image is an aspect of representation: we see what responds to our creative aspirations and what "breaks through" into our creative space.