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Obscene West | Video art programme
2021-12-02/19:00 - 21:00
This cold season, Kaunas Artists’ House invites you to look back on the 1990s – a period of social, political, and cultural changes in Lithuania and the world – and presents a project and a series of events called Obscene West. In Honey dedicated to female artists who were actively creating at that time.
December 2, at 7 p.m. the screening of video works created by artists from the Eastern European region will take place at Kaunas Artists’ House, presenting works by Sanja Ivekovic and Dalibor Martinis, Vika Begalskaya, Artur Żmijewski, Kristina Inčiūraitė, Boryana Rossa, and Mare Tralla.
The six works featured in the programme present feminist perspectives on the transformation of this transitional decade from a socialist economy to global capitalism. Acting as witnesses, they speak from a gender-sensitive perspective and look beyond the narrative of the traditional cultural liberation that typically characterizes this period.
According to the D’EST video art platform one of curators Tanya Bogacheva, on the one hand, in the conditions of abject poverty, associated with the period following the disintegration of the socialist bloc, sexuality and gender were often used as currency or barter for material resources and leveraged in the economy of attention. On the other hand, we witness that gender binary can be seen as an ontological concept. When its immanent conflict is reflected in relationships with real or implied others, femininity and sex can also be instruments of rebellion and resistance against these invisible hierarchies.
During the evening, the following topics will be covered in six works:
Sanja Ivekovic and Dalibor Martinis video Chanoyu (1983)
Boryana Rossa’s solo video performance The Moon and the Sunshine (2000)
Kristina Inčiūraitė’s video Order (2004)
ME and AIDS (1993) by Artur Zmijewski
Vika Begalskaya’s film Welcome (2004)
Mare Tralla’s work Kiss (1996)
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The project, named after Eglė Rakauskaitė’s the performance/video installation Meduje (in honey) made in 1996, will analyze the issues of gender roles and sexuality in the changing 1990s, examine the manifestations of feminist movements in Lithuanian art as well as the other post-Soviet countries.
The project is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
The project is curated by Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė and Edvinas Grinkevičius
Project design: Studio Cryo