As a curator, I see my role as a caretaker: of the artist and the audience.
Friend My Muse
A solo show by Rūta Adomaitienė at Gallery Artifex
Special thanks to Rodion Petroff
To weave a rug by hand, the artist must lock themselves in a studio in front of the loom, and knot after knot, for months, or even years, progress little by little. According to the myth of the artist and their sources of inspiration, it seems like they should be isolated, especially when making something meticulously with their hands. With Friend My Muse, Rūta proposes a different approach to her creativity: the weaving process is the same, the sheep are the same, but the artist is not alone.
Twenty years have passed since Rūta made her last tapestry, and now she comes back to the loom with muses. The tapestry is made through the touch of only her own fingers, meditatively tying each knot, but the inspiration comes through connection with others: friends, from textile study mates like Daiva Zubrienė, Gražina Aleksandra Škikūnaitė, Ramunė Gutauskaitė-Žutautienė, to Solveiga Gutautė, an artist who is peeking through together with Rūta in the image of the rug.
The image is also inspired by another source - it was made based on a capture of artist’s Rodion Petroff’s installation Face 2 Face (2018), which is also presented in the exhibition. Friend My Muse addresses creativity as a process that happens not in a vacuum, but through connections and contact with people, art and the material world. The image, seemingly pixelated, draws connotations with a face call, isolated and glitchy. The contrast with the warm and natural wool, and the contextualization of the work reflects the feminist and grounded practice of the artist, and invites the viewer to get to know her muses and become friends as well.
About the artists:
Rūta Adomaitienė is an artist, art therapist and a mother of four children. Rūta graduated from textile at the Art Academy in Vilnius in 1995. and in 2007 became a nurse, working as one for 13 years. In 2021 she graduated with an MA in Art Therapy from Lithuanian Health Sciences university, and works as an art therapist at Ąžuolyno Klinika.
Rodion Petroff is an artist and a painter, who creates and works in Klaipėda. In 2011 he finished his Masters at the Art Academy in Vilnius, and has had more than 10 personal exhibitions and participated in more than 30 group shows in Lithuania and abroad.
Making the Tapestry
Rūta’s contact with the world is created through touch: of the sheep, of the thread, and of the tapestry. She weaves the rug by hand, knotting one knot after the other. To make such a tapestry, one has to first make a foundation: fasten strong linen threads, on which the knott will be made on the looming frame. Then, starting from the bottom, knots are made, with threads and combinations of them chosen according to the design of the tapestry. The length of the process depends on the size of the rug, the thickness of the thread, the density of the knots, and on the skill and speed of the loomer: it can take from months to years. Friend My Muse (2022) took 2 years. The artist finds looming meditative: choosing a thread, knotting it, cutting, choosing a thread, knotting it, cutting… puts her in a trance, making time fly by.
For all of her tapestries, Rūta uses natural, un-dyed wool, most of which she sheared off the sheep herself. The color of the wool comes from different breeds and the age of the sheep, as some of them are born black and fade from the sun to grey or white. The artist shears the sheep, washes the wool, and then has the wool carded (brushed out). Out of the carded wool threads are spooled, and looming can begin.
Friends Muses
‘Friend My Muse’ (2022) is the first tapestry of Rūta after a 20 year break. It can be very difficult to start after such a long break - just like starting from the beginning. The artist attributes the inspiration to start looming again to her friends. Rūta went to the quadrinialle ‘Q19: Memorabilia. To Record Into Memory’ together with Solveiga Gutautė, who is visible in the tapestry together with the artist. There, in an exhibition ‘Non-Recording Medium’ they took a picture of themselves in Rodion Petroff’s installation ‘Face 2 Face’ (2018). This picture became the basis for the design of the rug, which is why the artist invited Rodion to join this exhibition with the same installation.
Contact with others - friends and art works - inspired the design of the tapestry, and continued in the making of it. In the beginning, to make the foundation, and at the end, to take the finished rug out of the frame, Rūta invited her study mates to help out: artists Daiva Zubrienė, Gražina Aleksandra Škikūnaitė and Ramunė Gutauskaitė-Žutautienė. Contact with people and art inspired Rūta to come back to making art, and the looming of the tapestry inspired to renew old connections. ‘Friend My Muse’ - is a suggestion to see and join creativity as a web, which weaves different contexts and encourages contact.
Delivered home with no eye contact
A solo show by Diana Halabi at Growing Space Wielewaal
They say it takes three years to feel at home in a new place. Where is your home in those three years then? And what if the home you left doesn’t exist anymore? And how does constant contact on the phone with the old home affect our connections?
With natural and unnatural disasters, economic and social displacement, many people who have left their hometowns for a better life (or just the possibility of it) lose the home as they know it from their previous life, while not yet having rooted themselves in their new place. Having the sense of home is feeling like you belong, and only when one feels like they belong, they can contribute to their surroundings. Being elegant is something that is reserved for those who feel at home. (Diana Halabi)
The cell phone is an extension of one’s being, and what we see on the screen shapes us as much as what we see through our windows. The need for staying connected in distant times divides lives geographically, both preventing new roots to come in, but also mystifying the old ones. We talk to our friends and relatives left behind, but we never really look into each other’s eyes, making the contact superficial, but a life line still.
Diana freezes this feeling of limbo by painting screenshots of her calls with friends and family left in Beirut, while she calls them from her new place, which is not yet home, Rotterdam, and seeing what was once home change before her eyes.
Installation by Bruno Neves and pictures by Steven Maybury
Interview with Diana Halabi
[15:43, 9/24/2020]
Julija: Can you really see someone through a screen?
Diana: Not really, a screen speaks more of where we are, more than whom we are, or how we are. It is tiring to have this reality, but it is much better than having to travel to do my masters in fine arts in 1900 for example, where I would be sending my friends and family letters only, which would be nonetheless very valuable, but at the same time very ghostly.
Julija: Why do you facetime instead of calling?
Diana: I need to see people in their settings, I need to show them my surroundings too, I
don’t want any of us to become like a ghost stuck in a labyrinth of memory. But unfortunately, even though I video call,when I want to look into their eyes, I still find myself looking at their eyes and never in their eyes. The impossibility of eye contact in the video call leaves you with the imperfections of technology and confronts you with the reality of distance. And a phone can never break that distance, and we find ourselves neither here nor there. And this is exactly why I decided to paint those video calls, I used to say that whoever didn’t migrate or live abroad or never has been a refugee, can never understand what is it to have the dominance of this rectangle format of socializing (the video call) in one’s life, but then the Covid-19 pandemic came to our lives, and almost everyone became a migrant in their own homes, having video calls almost all the time.
Julija: What role does the phone play in how you see where you belong?
Diana: The phone is a blessing and a curse at the same time, everything related to it made me have dual realities at the same time. Thinking of when the 17 October revolution took place in Beirut in 2019, I was just 1 month 17 days in Rotterdam, very fresh in the city, and seeing what was happening in Beirut was heartbreaking. My phone was in my hands all the time, even in the seminars, I was refreshing facebook every minute to stay connected to what is happening in the streets of Beirut. So the phone can split one’s life into two places, which is both beautiful and exhausting. I once asked my friends to have a video call with me from inside the protest, so physically I would be walking in the streets of the Netherlands, and people greeting me with a smile (if it is sunny and they are in a good mood) and in my phone I am looking at tear gases and people running for their lives. Disturbing no?
Julija: Very! Where is your home now then?
Diana: I didn’t think that this question would be so hard to answer. Since I arrived here in Rotterdam, one year and one month ago, I haven’t visited my hometown yet, and a lot has happened since I left: a revolution, inflation, a Blast that killed over 300 people and injured thousands, and destroyed half of the city (my home included), and a pandemic. So where is home? Is it here in a city where I am still trying to find my favorite café in? Or my favorite cheese? I don’t think so yet. But is it then in a city that changed so much since I left? I am afraid to know the answer. I am as well afraid of visiting, because perhaps I don’t want to have an answer to this question, because the answer might be I have no home anymore, until further notice.
In Poland, David Bowie Was a Woman
A group show at Van Abbemuseum
In Poland, David Bowie was a woman presents an inquiry into designing post-post-Soviet identity. Eight young artists and graphic designers, who grew up in Eastern Europe but now live in the West, present posters based on their own individual experiences, depicting their contemporary identities.
During communist times identity was constructed by the state, designed by constructivists for whom the reproductive quality of graphic design and print made it the art of the Soviet people. When design and art becomes a practice and statement of individualism, when identities and their signifiers are blurred and borders between East and West loosen up, what makes up our identities? Izabela Trojanowska, an 80s pop star in Poland, with her red stilettos, predatory hair and puffed shoulders can be seen as a symbol of the shift to porous identity, and the possibilities of playing with gender, national and political belonging.
The artists involved in this exhibition were: Aigustė Mockutė & Ellis Main, Anna Nana (wrs_thg), Annija Muižule, Katerina Sidorova, Ksti Hu, Leeza Pritychenko, Laimonas Zakas, Misha Gurovich and Miša Skalskis.