NO CUTTING CORNERS V. Curators Talk Queer Stories
18 December, Monday, 2023, 18:30
Participants: Augustas Čičelis, Suza Husse, Laima Kreivytė
Moderated by Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė
Curating queer stories and experiences in the art world involves a nuanced exploration that goes beyond mere representation. It demands a critical look at the intentions behind the curation to avoid falling into the trap of queerbaiting. How does the curator engage with the queer community to ensure authenticity and respect? Moreover, can one even say that there is a queer „community“, as opposed to individuals with different expectations and realities? Are efforts made to showcase not only art that depicts queer themes but also art created by queer-identified artists? Art institutions wield significant influence in shaping the narrative around art, and their actions can either reinforce or challenge societal norms, so this time we’ll be talking about both spaces specifically for queer people and the integration of their stories into wider museum programmes.
Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė is an artist, curator and researcher. She bases her practice and research on the methodologies of people’s history, feminist and queer ethnography and theory. She has carried out several studies on the labor history of Lithuania, focusing mainly on women’s work stories from the Soviet time and the nineties. In Kaunas Artists’ House together with friend and curator Edvinas Grinkevičius, Agnė has been working on the project „Obscene West“, the interdisciplinary multifaceted program of presentations, exhibitions and performances exploring changes in the cultural context related to sexualities during a period of social, political and cultural turmoil in Lithuania in the 90s.
Augustas Čičelis is the curator of the „išgirsti“ space, gallery and the Lithuanian Queer Archive, co-founder, programmer and coordinator of the 11-year-old Vilnius queer festival ‘Kreivės’. Augustas has a degree in Gender Studies, has been involved in social and cultural queer and feminist movements since 2006, acting in the wider field of social welfare, support and self-expression.
Dr. Laima Kreivytė is an independent curator, artist, writer and Associate Professor at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She has curated more than 60 exhibitions, including Lithuanian Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and „From Dusk till Dawn. 20 Years of LGBT Freedom in Lithuania“ (2013); co-curated the new exhibition of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2019) and „Unfraimed: Leis, Tabaka, Rožanskaitė“ in Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (2023–2024). Kreivytė has edited books and curated exhibitions of Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, Kęstutis Zapkus, Jurga Barilaitė, Igoris Piekuras and Milda Drazdauskaitė among others. She is a founding member of the queer feminist artists’ collective „Cooltūristės“. In 2018 Kreivytė was awarded a Government Prize for Culture and Arts.
Suza Husse is active within artistic and social practices nurtured by queer, feminist, anti-racist and decolonial knowings and methods. Growing up in Dresden in the ‘transformation time’ of the 1990s, she was socialized within a white, hetero-normative post-GDR environment and, as a teenager, within youth- and countercultures critical of the surrounding neo-liberal and neo-fascist developments. The critical cohabitation with and undoing of these influences and their historical continuities, and the engagement with alternative realities remain an active part of their work. Since 2012, Suza has been co-shaping the art space „District / School Without Center Berlin“ with an emphasis on performative and collaborative practices, transdisciplinary artistic research and pedagogies of political imagination. From here, in 2018 together with Elske Rosenfeld, they co-initiated the artistic research project „wild recuperations. material from below“ on intersectional approaches to dissident politics, ecologies and sexualities that emerged in state socialism. Suza is the co-founder of the aqueous anti-colonial mythmaking, art and publishing collective „The Many Headed Hydra“ (since 2016).
The conversation will be held in English.
Entry is free of charge.
The curatorial discussion series „No Cutting Corners“ invites practitioners and theoreticians of visual art exhibition curation to discuss their methods and strategies, the challenges they face, and the broader contexts of contemporary exhibitions.
Organised by Kultfliuksas and the National Gallery of Art
Curator Goda Aksamitauskaitė
Graphic designer Ineta Armanavičiūtė
Financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
22 Konstitucijos Ave, LT-08105, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 212 2997,
info@ndg.lt
www.ndg.lt
