The notion of interdisciplinarity, ingrained in the name of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association, has periodically triggered debate and critique over the recent decades – heated at times and occasionally tinted with resignation, accepting the term’s inevitable latitude, vagueness, and odd temporality. Eventually the prevailing attitude came to be that interdisciplinarity was simply the status quo of present-day art rather than an attribute that ensured a radically new, different quality and contemporaneity. Today the term seems to have become a mechanically repeated trope or a pragmatic state funding allocation classifier, while ‘interdisciplinarians’ (members of the LIAA in the narrow sense) are not an easily definable and recognisable tribe they once were.
Yet the perception of (artistic) disciplines has also changed. They are not considered synonymous with retrograde modernism and parochial traditionalism anymore; on the contrary, questioning the ideologies of vehement contemporaryism and declarative interdisciplinarity, artists and other cultural practitioners unironically indulge in the pleasures offered by the ‘new old’ disciplines – textile, drawing, moulding, glassmaking, painting, sculpture and even folk art. Instead of longing for the innocence of these disciplines, they have a sense that the immersive, material and psychoaesthetic qualities of the latter perfectly resonate with the present without any clear timestamps. The face of the disciplines is familiar yet already different. They are no longer a taboo or a fetish; rather, they are something that evades the vocabularies to which we have become accustomed.
At the same time it is interesting to ponder the authors’ personal disciplines – routines, procedures, rituals, productivity and inspiration-seeking exercises. There is definitely a connection between the comeback of artistic disciplines in new guises and the ongoing discursive turn to sincerity, care, mental wellness, inclusion, openness and sustainability. The exhibition seeks to trace the interrelation between disciplinary expression and all-encompassing emotional self-discipline, or at least to offer hints about its possible forms.
The opening of ‘Disciplines’ coincides with the beginning of Vilnius Gallery Weekend and is part of its programme. A guided tour of the exhibition with the curator and the featured artists will take place on September 7 at 1 pm.
Artists – Greta Eimulytė, Vaiva Grainytė, Elena Grudzinskaitė, Algirdas Jakas, Elena Kanarskaitė, Liudvikas Kesminas, Indrė Liškauskaitė, Donata Minderytė, Rūta Spelskytė
Curator – Jurij Dobriakov
Designer – Elena Kanarskaitė
Opening
2024/09/05 19.00
Working hours
2024/09/06 16.00–19.00
2024/09/07–09/08 12.00–18.00
2024/09/12–10/12 IV–V 16.00–19.00, VI 13.00–17.00
Guided tour
2024/09/07 13.00
Address: Atletika gallery, Vitebsko 21, Vilnius.
Admission to the exhibition and all events is free of charge, without registration.
Organised by the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. Activities of LIAA are financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality. The creation of some of the work financed by the Research Council of Lithuania, agreement Nr. [S-PD-22-45].
