Julija Skudutytė graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a Master’s degree in Monumental Painting and actively participates in exhibitions and art projects in Lithuania and abroad. The artist has already held several exhibitions and expositions and has been awarded prizes for book illustrations, paintings, and expositions. Last year, at the international contemporary art fair ArtVilnius23, Skudutytė was chosen by the jury as the best young artist at the fair.
Best known for her watercolors, Skudutytė is not tied to one genre. Her work includes still life, interior compositions reflecting everyday life, self-portraits, architectural and natural motifs, and installations. In her work, she delves into the relationship between human beings and everyday objects, looking for paradoxes, where uselessness and usefulness intertwine, where spirituality and consumerism meet. Her search is not limited to objects but explores her own materiality and usefulness, which leads to works of art in which rubbish turns into beings and people become things.
INFJ is the artist’s sixth solo exhibition, where she will present new works created during an art residency in Düsseldorf, Germany. These works were exhibited at the Atelier am Eck gallery. According to Matthias Grotevent, the curator of the Düsseldorf exhibition, Julija’s work naturally confronts her own nature, so she decided to take a personality test she found on the internet. The test identifies 16 different personality types, and Skudutytė’s results described her personality as a very special type – INFJ. Only 1% of people in the whole world, such as Jesus, are INFJ.
“I suddenly felt special and found it fascinating how this test affected my self-perception. I even used the result to describe myself in a dating app. When people asked me about it, I used to say: “I like to think I’m special.” This reminds me of my childhood fascination with religious revelations. Selected people were considered “chosen” and more unique than everyone else,” said Skudutytė.
On her travels, the artist began to create self-portraits in front of depictions of saints experiencing a revelation. In her studio, she produced paintings of herself experiencing a vision and slowly became a vision herself in her artistic working process.
In the installations of INFJ, the artist uses the Glanzbilder – cut illustrations to decorate books of letters and poetry – as a template to construct a certain aesthetic through a nostalgic connection and to develop her iconography.
J. Skudutytė’s exhibition INFJ is a part of the long-running project Art Space for Young Artists initiated by Vilnius City Gallery Meno Niša, which pays special attention to young, promising artists. The exhibition will run until October 19.
The sponsor of Vilnius City Gallery Meno Niša is Vilnius City Municipality.
