Chronotipia, 2017

Plasticine

Dimensions variable

The title of the work is “Chronotipia” and it means time print. Author took the prints off of Jewish gravestones that have been displaced during soviet time and today they are still mostly remained in various supporting walls, stairs or other architectural structures. The situation seems inadequate or strange at best, and raises the question – how do we perceive and handle memory? Alone headstones are being transferred, moved, and evidently, they are going to be on the move for quite some time. Author is interested in erasing and leveling of memory, how certain objects of memory are selected and relocated time and again creating new meanings and structures. It’s like memory that “walks” from place to place. The question of how to preserve memories in cemeteries is unexpectedly complex, not to mention the plethora of varying opinions.
Seibutis used plasticine as material for the prints. Plasticine is frail and soft, not suitable for taking a colourful relief. It gives off an aura of inadequacy and unexpectedness, that helps with the usual didactic approach with grave topics such as these, and at the same time comments and transfers the obscene and abnormal state of the headstones, that to this day they are still in these types of structures

Fragment of the work: