Is een kunstenaar die gesubsidieerd wordt een professionele kunstenaar ?

Het Litouws paviljoen in de Biennale van Venetie roept dit soort vragen op. Kunstenaar Darius Miksys trad op als curator. Hij koos ervoor om ALLE Litouwse kunstenaars die in de periode na het ineenstorten van het communistisch regime een subsidie van de staat gekregen hebben, uit te nodigen om een werk in te dienen. De bezoeker kan zelf een werk selecteren en dit aan zijn of haar oordeel onderwerpen. Een aanrader!

Behind the White Curtain

Artist: Darius Mikšys

Commissioner: Kęstutis Kuizinas

Organiser: Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius

Address: Lithuanian Pavilion
Scuola di San Pasquale
at San Francesco della Vigna
Castello 2786
Venice

Opening hours:
10:00–18:00, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays (except June 6–7)
1 June–18 September 2011


What would the first national exhibition of Lithuanian art, held in 1907, look like if it were assembled today? In 1907, Lithuanian artists worked in different geographical contexts, yet they were united by their aim to lay the groundwork for a new national culture. Based on the notion of ethnicity, the historiography of Lithuanian art considers the 1907 exhibition as the onset of Lithuanian art to this day. Could artists living in the same geographic domain, but who belong to different cultural contexts, be mobilised by a similar aim today?

Behind the White Curtain is a work by Darius Mikšys for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale of International Art. It attempts to bring together and display a symbolic exhibition curated by a modern state and turn it into a real exhibition and national archive. Acting as both a self-constructed and self-organised public mirror, Behind the White Curtain constitutes a collection of artworks by artists who received the State Grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania over the last two decades (1992–2010).

The Lithuanian state selects artists for a symbolic exhibition by allocating prizes and grants to further the practice of Lithuanian artists. It could be seen as a targeted programming of cultural products. In this way, the state acts as a curator, whose exhibition hall does not have walls, and whose exhibition is on show for decades. Is it possible to see such an exhibition? How does one visit it? Behind the White Curtain is an installation and performance, taking place on both sides of the curtain. One side serves as a storage space for the entire collection, while the second operates as a rotating exposition; shaped according to the specific interests of each visitor.

Darius Mikšys (b.1969, Kaunas, Lithuania). His projects vary from a video documentation of a visit to the Parapsychology Fair at the Vilnius Sports’ Palace to the attempted production of Gilles Peterson's shroud, selling an empty bottle of perfume on e-bay, proposing an ABBA museum in Qantas plane for Tempelhof airport in Berlin, creating a body of sculptures titled "My Jeff Koons", and establishing the very first Lithuanian cricket club named "Abdul Aziz's Holiday IX".

Lithuanian Pavilion project has been awarded a Special Mention for its conceptually elegant, and productively ambiguous framing of a nation’s art history.
For further information, contact:

Ula Tornau,
E: ula@cac.lt / T: +370 689 99595
Jurga Daubaraite,
E: jurga@cac.lt / T: +370 617 23218