Exhibition “Dalia Grinkevičiūtė (1927-1987). Spaces / Overcome distances” is a jour- ney into our collective memory. From a whirlpool of images, sounds, and scents, their respective artists bring our senses into the unique and sometimes contradictory expe- riences of Dalia’s world: the luminous childhood in interwar Kaunas, the bone-chilling Siberian cold, the hopelessness felt in a cellar where a mother is being interred. The exhibit seeks to revisit both her life and her memoir, Lithuanians at the Laptev Sea. Dalia’s work has come to serve as an inspiration for new art works and this exhibit in par- ticular – not only to remind us of her story but also to enable us to “experience” it. But first and foremost – its purpose is to overcome the distances that took the author from Kaunas to Siberia, then back again to Kaunas, and again from Kaunas to Siberia – one more time... The exhibition consists of modules – SPACES, devoted to the three pivotal episodes in Dalia’s life: her childhood in Kaunas between the wars; deportation; and her mother’s burial after the war. The olfactory art group Hortus Apertus explores the diverse peri- ods of her life through scents, an artistic medium gaining popularity both in museum culture and psychological discourse. Not only scent, of course. The exhibit also uses im- ages, sound effects, objects, the cold, innovative animation – all contribute to the ex- periential element, encouraged as we are, to feel the event with the body, have our ol- factory senses stimulate our imagination, and, ultimately, steer us to that moment of identification. Thus, the exhibition speaks to the visitor not only with words but with the senses, too, using a universal language that can be understood by our foreign visitors to Kaunas Eu- ropean Cultural Capital 2022.
Project manager: Deimantė Cibulskienė
Exhibition authors: Gintarė Valevičiūtė Brazauskienė, Vytenė Muschick, Jurga Graf
Exhibition creative team: group of olfactory artists “Hortus Apertus”, Gintarė Valevičiūtė Brazauskienė, Jurga Graf, Vytenė Muschick, Antanas Skučas, Marius Salynas, Martynas Vilimavičius, Laima Čijunskaitė, Inga Zamulskienė etc.
Exhibition sponsors and partners:
Kaunas 2022, National Museum of Lithuania, Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishing House, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, Botanical Garden of Vilnius University, “Hortus Apertus”, “Tylus kinas”.
Exhibition sponsors: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Kaunas City Municipal, The Lithuanian Film Centre.
