The year 2022 will enhance the contemporary vibes with international highlights, brave declarations and globally praised personalities – altogether 60 exhibitions have been scheduled for next year – giving more than enough reasons to take the time for a journey to Kaunas and discover it all. Here are a few highlights that one should not miss in the first half of 2022.
13th Kaunas Biennial Once Upon Another Time
The 13th Kaunas Biennial, open until 20 February, explores how can we connect different places of the world with people’s stories? Audiences can hear these stories in films, sculptures, installations, performances, and through the spoken word, text, poetry, and other forms.
The Kaunas Biennial exhibition reflects on different examples of humanity’s resilience and adaptation. The exhibition presents works by 23 international artists and groups, exploring myths and fairy tales and personal and community stories of survival and transformation experienced in reality. Encountering contemporary art in unusual places, including Basketball House, T. Ivanauskas Museum of Zoology and Devils’ Museum, and public spaces, visitors to the biennial are invited on a tour of the city of Kaunas and the history of human survival, presented in new ways. The programme is created by famous Lithuanian and international artists: Lina Lapelytė, Pakui Hardware, Jonas Mekas, Janet Cardif ir George Bures Miller, Christian Boltanski, Jeremy Shaw and many others. Read more
That Which We Do Not Remember, by William Kentridge
One of the world’s most influential contemporary artists, an honest and painfully candid humanist is bringing his art to Eastern Europe for the first time. This is a hugely important event for both Kaunas and the artist himself, as William Kentridge will be visiting the city of his ancestors. At the exhibition, open from 21 January until the end of November Kentridge addresses humanity’s selective memory – the rejection of facts, history, and memories as a means of self-preservation or a propaganda tool is just as common a characteristic among people in Johannesburg and Rome as it is in Kaunas, says Kentridge, and calls us to dialogue with ourselves. Read more
Memory of Being, by Marina Abramović
One of the most significant events will be Memory of Being, a solo exhibition by one of the world’s most renowned artists Marina Abramović, in Kaunas Picture Gallery. The show, opened from March to May, is based on Abramović’s series The Cleaner, which began at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2017.
The exhibition provides a detailed presentation of the most important stages of Marina’s work since the 1960s. It will feature video documentations of her interviews and most famous works, as well as the artist’s best-known video installations.
Modernism For The Future 360/365
To be launched on 22 January at the opening weekend of Kaunas 2022, the exhibition is an extraordinary report about the Modernism for the Future Programme. Over twenty artists from five countries will spread their relationship with architectural heritage at the iconic Kaunas Central Post Office.
With this exhibition, Kaunas takes the lead in the modernism preservation movement and finally establishes itself as a centre of world research, promotion, and attraction of modernism in the world. The significance of Kaunas as a centre of global modernism will be one of the most important and enduring achievements long after the European Capital of Culture project comes to a close. The exhibition will be open until 10 April.
