The title of the exhibition, Adonta ta melê (Greek: “Her yet singing limbs”), is a reference to the mountain nymph, Echo, depicted in Greek mythology, and her curse to repeat the words spoken by others, leaving only the broken endings. Her figure acts as a metaphor for the present state and culture, where the overload of images and information makes it impossible to speak one’s own words, to live one’s own experiences, to see one’s own sights. This repetitive echo becomes a way of speaking and seeing that, on the one hand, strives for difference, but most of all for complete silence, for dissolution in the blind light of painting.
Gabija Pritkovaitė: “In my painting, I am seeking a place where there is no longer any memory, no context or experience, only the ever-lasting present. Echoes resound in abandoned painting spaces, images without context, experiences without memory. Abandoned are interiors where grass grows on the walls. Abandoned is the reflection of a mirror that cannot find the photographer’s image. Abandoned is the longing that no longer recognises its home.
I see painting as a temporal experience in which we are compelled to initiate the beginning and the end. The viewer is also invited to get lost in these spaces, to throw away the keys to the familiar doors of their own homes and to peer inside through the eyes of an intruder. This loss helps to recognise oneself anew, to fill the spaces with a silent murmur, an echo which, I believe, will help to break out of the spiralling repetition of images.
To keep walking through the blue-painted orangeries, to gaze into the light of the rustling leaves of the trees. To walk and perhaps to never arrive at anything. To recognise nothing. To get nothing back. Hear nothing. Only to see.”
Adonta ta melê is part of the Graduation Show series in collaboration with Vilnius Academy of Arts.
Organiser: Pamėnkalnio Gallery.
Sponsors: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City, Lithuanian Artists’ Association.
Partner: Vilnius Academy of Arts.
