Participating artists:
Eglė Budvytytė in collaboration with Marija Olšauskaitė and Julija Steponaitytė, Susanna Jablonski, Paul Maheke, Santiago Mostyn, Jin Mustafa, Ieva Rojūtė, Mark Ther, Elin Már Øyen Vister
Curator:
Rado Ištok
The exhibition The Spectral Forest presents newly commissioned and existing works by eight international contemporary artists. Departing from the history of deforestation and afforestation, and displacement and resettlement, on the Curonian Spit, as well as the significance of the sacred groves in the Baltic region, the exhibition is conceived as a promenade through an enchanted forest. The Spectral Forest refers both to spectres, ghosts, and spirits traditionally residing in the forest, and to a spectrum. While both words have the same Latin root (spectrum: appearance, apparition), a spectrum represents a band of colours, as seen in a rainbow, or more generally a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values as quantifiable numbers but can vary across a continuum. A spectrum thus implies a broad range grouped together, similarly to a forest encompassing various species, and, in the case of the Curonian Spit, simultaneously stabilising the underlying sand dunes.
The exhibition, alongside an accompanying catalogue (to be published in January 2021), is the final chapter of the four formats – alongside a residency, a workshop, and two publications – guest-curated by Rado Ištok at NAC within the 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, a European Cooperation Project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. As a part of the programme, five of the participating artists took part in a two-month residency at NAC in Autumn 2019 in order to produce newly commissioned works for the exhibition. In parallel, a three-day workshop Dwelling on the Threshold, exploring spaces of passage, flux, and fluidity, took place at Nida Art Colony in October 2019, accompanied by an eponymous online handbook published in February 2020.
Exhibition guide
Exhibition design:
Ieva Rojūtė
Graphic design:
Gailė Pranckūnaitė
Exhibition install:
Jokūbas Čižikas
Exhibition furniture:
Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas
Translation and editing:
George Jepson, Alexandra Bondarev, and Monika Kalinauskaitė
Project management, production and coordination: current and former NAC team (Goda Aksamitauskaitė, Rasa Antanavičiūtė, Mindaugas Bepirštis, Egija Inzule, Luka Jefremovaitė, Monika Kalinauskaitė, Indrė Liškauskaitė, Kestutis Minderis, Julija Navarskaitė, Beatričė Surgela, Yana Ustymenko)
The exhibition is part of the project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
