The 2017 Kaunas Biennial has announced that artist Paulina Pukyte will curate this year’s event, the 11th edition of the Lithuanian biennial, taking place from September 15 to November 30, 2017.
With the title “There and Not There: questioning the possibility of a monument,” the biennial’s artists will examine the history of monuments in Lithuania, and propose new ways to deal with remembrance in the form of public art.
After Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Republic in 1990, Pukyte writes in the announcement of the theme, the country tore down its communist monuments and sculptures to rebuild monuments dedicated to pre-World War II ideals, in pre-WWII styles. New monuments, however, have not been able to capture the country’s interest.
The biennial, she writes, aims “to stimulate and legitimize radically new, contemporary, conceptual, relevant ideas and strategies for remembrance, inviting international and local artists to look back at the removed, rethink the existing [and] imagine the future monuments.”
Paulina Pukyte is a London- and Vilnius-based artist, whose practice spans installation, moving image, and found object work that questions the status quo of accepted cultural and institutional norms.
Curating “There and Not There” adds to her extensive resume of creative activities, which includes, besides visual art, non-fiction and fiction writing, essays, cultural commentary, and lecturing.