Make Sauka’s “Mother” Talk

Could you imagine a conversation with an artwork? This project gives us a chance to find answers to some interesting questions about the painting.

The idea of this interactive project was born in 2018 during the art hackathon called hARTckathon in which MO Museum and LOGIN festival joined their creative forces. The winner of hARTckathon was a group of authors who suggested creating an interactive tool which would allow to communicate with the artwork personally. The main concept of this project is to arouse interest in modern art. Using your smartphone you will be able to learn more about the author and to understand the origin of the painting.

Šarūnas Sauka, one of the most famous Lithuanian painters, painted the majority of his works in the 80s and the 90s. In the field of Lithuanian art, it is hard to confuse the artist with someone else because of the large format of his canvas and realistic horrendous scenes. Author of dramatic stories often explores the themes of eerie ceremonies, creepy rituals or hell and purgatory visions. In his paintings, the artist creates a mythical world full of human-animal hybrids, lepers or figures of saints. When creating various characters, Sauka often uses his self-portrait. In the painting Mother, we can find some elements of his self-portrait as well: the woman on her knees has Sauka’s face. The macabre scene of the execution ceremony depicts the drama of the relationship between the mother and her son. The author symbolically materializes himself in the body of a woman-mother and analyses psychological motives and reasons of our actions.

PHOTO: Šarūnas Sauka ”Mother” 2012, Canvas, oil