National Gallery of Art. In 1980, the LSSR Museum of Revolution was established in a building designed by architects Gediminas Baravykas and Vytautas Vielius in Vilnius. The façade of the building symbolised a flying flag. In 2009, after an expanded reconstruction, the National Gallery of Art was opened in the same building. In 2012, at the crossing of the old and new territories of the building, the project »Museum« was presented for the first time in a rectangular structure made especially for this purpose.

Dainius Liškevičius

*1970 in Kaunas (Lithuania), lives and works in Vilnius.

Since 1998 he is an active member of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artist’s Association. Recently the Gallery Artifex (Vilnius, LT) (2013), the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (DE) and the National Art Gallery Vilnius (LT) dedicated solo exhibitions to the artist (both 2012). Furthermore his installations and performances have been shown in various group exhibitions, amongst others in the Jonas Mekas Visual Art Centre (Vilnius, LT), the CAC (Vilnius, LT) and the 12 Star Gallery (London, UK) (all 2013). A selection of recent video works by Dainius Liškevičius can be viewed on YouTube.

Dainius Liškevičius, 17 March 1965 /M-Maybe He Became Ill and Couldn’t Leave the Studio, acrylic on canvas, 198 x 500 cm, 2012. The title is composed of the date of Antanas Kraujelis´ perish and the title of Roy Lichtenstein’s work created the same year. Photo: Sebastian Schröder

Dainius Liškevičius, La Caricatura, video performance, black and white, sound, 5:34 min., 2010. The performance is based on Vitalijus Suchockis’ 1971 cartoon »Šluota«.

A composition of labels of alcoholic beverages from the socialist East Bloc. Sourced from an anonymous collection.

Dainius Liškevičius´ first »political protest action« A family album. A double-page spread with a picture of rolling Easter eggs. The yard of the four-storey block, where the artist grew up, Kaunas, 1974.

Dainius Liškevičius, DANAË 10:45, video, sound, 12.43 min. At 10:45 on June 15, 1985, at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad a politically motivated citizen of the Lithuanian nationality slashed, with a knife, Rembrandt’s 17th century masterpiece Danaë and poured on the painting approximately a litre of sulphuric acid.

Dainius Liškevičius, installation view, »Museum«, Gallery for Contemporary Art, Leipzig 2012, photo: Sebastian Schröder

A dolphin's drawing. Executed by a dolphin called Glorija at the Lithuanian Maritime Museum. Gouache on paper, 2008. The painting is part of the personal archive of Dainius Liškevičius.

Dainius Liškevičius, Hitler. Drawing, felt pen on paper. 1977. The artist´s first felt pens. Hitler’s portrait drawn by the artist at home as a first-grader, copied from a Third Reich postage stamp from his childhood stamp collection. He remembers to have made a copy of Lenin’s portrait from another stamp before that. He was going to take this drawing to school, but his mother and grandmother learned of his intention and advised him against it. Photo: Sebastian Schröder

»MUSEUM«

An interview with Dainius Liškevičius
by Anna Jehle

In his installation »Museum« Dainius Liškevičius engages with possible forms of political and artistic expression. By using furniture, objects, images, documents and films, he creates a space in which he exhibits protest as an essential form of artistic production. »Museum« sets out to revise Lithuanian art history via a range of associations, as it commandeers discursive gaps through a complex network of personal and historical references.

ANNA JEHLE: Would you describe how you understand the »museum« in your installation?

DAINIUS LIŠKEVIČIUS: The structure and form of the project »Museum« simulate the museum that was presented in the lobby of the National Art Gallery at the invisible intersection of the old and the new buildings, a space not designated for exhibitions (2012). A separate rectangular space was constructed as a reservoir, which contained an exhibition. Thus a museum within a museum was created to be deliberately reminiscent of the initial function of the building housing the National Art Gallery: to represent revolutionaries who fought against the manifest system of repression. The shape of the inner museum was a reference to the »black box« defining the exposition. Inside, all exhibits interweave and form an inner narrative perceived or created by the spectator. Logical, conceptual and formal interconnections mimic a museological discourse by having three persons tell about the events of (internal) resistance and political protest during the period of Soviet occupation. This approach is also an attempt to bring this narrative into contemporary debates. The fourth – the main – unifying axis is the creator himself connecting the period, the fighters and the artists. The entire exposition of the project »Museum« includes autobiographical elements and may be interpreted through the concept of the creator.

In the language of contemporary art, »Museum« presents three political protesters who embody three decades of Soviet Lithuania. Their actions are associated with the movements and forms of contemporary art (underground, performance, art destruction, etc.) as something that was impossible and could not take place in the Soviet system. During the period of occupation, Lithuanian artists developed their creative strategies by opposing socialist realism and the imposed doctrine of art, which had been affecting cultural processes in Lithuania directly or indirectly for fifty years. When looked at from our present perspective, the context of Soviet Lithuanian art can be potentially enriched by adding cases of political protest – the events and the persons who could have had a direct or indirect impact on the developments in art.

A »leading« work of art has been created for every personality by choosing a relevant idea and style. The main piece dedicated to Antanas Kraujelis¹ is a large painting reminiscent of a Soviet film poster to be hung outside; it mimics a comic-strip, which tells the story of the twofold reality in Lithuania of the 1960s in the manner of Roy Lichtenstein. Performance has been chosen to commemorate Romas Kalanta², and the main work of art here is a video performance. In case of Bronius Maigis³, a fictional story based on photographs by Antanas Sutkus has been created: this is a series of drawings and a short 16 mm film, »Leisure Time«, which imitates the style peculiar to Soviet newsreels. The fourth fictional person connecting all three personalities is the »artist creator« presented through the art albums of the period, autobiographic fragments and a video performance created following a cartoon by Vitalijus Suchockis, »La Caricature«, and published in the Soviet magazine »Šluota«, as well as through the object, Beret-Aura.

AJ: In how far do you see the museum and political protest as a practice of art creation connected and/or opposed?

DL: In the case of »Museum«, my artistic investigation was explicitly focused on Soviet times. Acts of political protest of that time are still in a phase of rehabilitation in the frame of an official art historical canon as well as on an unofficial level. In this sense, it was interesting for me to create my own narrative regarding the topic. In my project »Museum« I connect both, the institution and the act of protest, but on the other hand the project’s content and strategies are very much opposing the museum’s official opinion.

AJ: Do you see your artistic practice in line with the tradition of Institutional Critique, as referred to in the Western art historical canon?

DL: Perhaps, although Institutional Critique is only one part of my concept, there are more layers of references: interventions in the museum, personal memory and experience, artistic research, etc. After more than twenty years since the restoration of Lithuanian independence, I can look at the Soviet period again, which I had kept (un)consciously »blocked« from myself. After having lived through the breakdown of the totalitarian system and an inner/spiritual resistance to remembering it, I started feeling a need to reflect on the forgotten reality, which is now being memorialized in one way or another, officially and institutionally. Usually memory does not observe a strict chronological order. Some pasts are given meaning and integrated into the present, others are forgotten. In my project »Museum«, I present separate cases of political resistance as outbursts of inner protest, which were important not only as political events in Lithuania, but also as an impulse for a culture suppressed by the regime. Through the interpretation of the acts carried out by three personalities and by interpellating facts from the history of Soviet Lithuanian culture, I reconstruct not only my memory, but also the collective memory. I additionally raise questions about the impact of the Soviet period on contemporary culture.

Endnotes

1 Antanas Kraujelis was a member of the postwar resistance, the last partisan, who shot himself on March 17, 1965, when his hideout was surrounded by the KGB.
2 Romas Kalanta was a dissident who, in protest against the occupation of Lithuania, set himself on fire on May 14, 1972 in the garden of the Kaunas Musical Theatre.
3 Bronius Maigis, on June 15, 1985, the anniversary of the invasion of Lithuania by the Red Army, performed a politically motivated act of vandalism against Rembrandt’s masterpiece »Danaë« (1636) at the Hermitage Museum.