Vsevolod Kovalevskij’s Margins.Miracles at the National Gallery of Art
Exhibition opening at 6 pm Friday, 22 May, 2026
On 22 May, the National Gallery of Art of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art opened Vsevolod Kovalevskij’s exhibition Margins. Miracles. This most recent project by artist brings together his personal archives, popular media imagery and city memory into a spatial narrative on the LGBTQIA+ community, fear, and the right of the stories to be visible.
Vilnius, London, Oslo – personal ‘Pride’ archives turned into a large-scale comic drawing
The first ‘Baltic Pride’ march in Vilnius in 2010 becomes a reference point to the exhibition narrative that evolves into a tapestry of events personally experienced by the artist in Vilnius, London and Oslo. The artist’s photography works, excerpts from media reports, drawings, and memory layers are worked into a monumental comic-style piece covering 194-square-meter-perimeter exhibition space of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius.
The artist’s choice of the aesthetics of the comic book seeks to obliterate the line between dry documentary reporting and emotional experience (fiction). The comic drawing of unorthodox scale serves to create an all-surround visual experience, which allows visitors to feel insiders to the story. A triangle-shaped platform – key component of the exhibition – evokes the dark history of the symbol – a badge of stigma and dehumanisation of LGBTQIA+ community, used in the Nazi concentration camps to mark homosexual men. Kovalevskij performs a gesture of symbolical reclamation by turning a pink triangle, the once-symbol-of-oppression, into a platform for queer voices, performances and being together.
‘When we first took part in the ‘Baltic Pride’ in Vilnius, simply being out on the street did not feel safe. After sixteen years, it is important to me to revisit these scenes not for the sake of nostalgia, but because they should not be approached as personal memories only. I wanted to carve out a space for the things that used to be marginalized and bring them – unapologetically – to the public eye,’ Kovalevskij says.
Following the 2010 ‘Baltic Pride’ march in Vilnius, where police outnumbered the participants, and the scandalising acts by some politicians engraved deeply into collective memory, Kovalevskij took part in the 2018 ‘Pride’ march in London, and in 2022, in Oslo. All the occasions were not only the experience of community, but of provocation and antagonism – in Oslo, even shooting. The memories and the archives of the artist, when he symbolically revisits these game-changing events, evoke the reality of fear and trauma, but also of solidarity, and the refusal to remain silent.
The culmination of a mature creative practice
Vsevolod Kovalevskij (also known as Seva) is an artist and curator born in Vilnius living between Lithuania and Norway. His work encompasses moving images, installations, textiles, photography, and performed spaces. He studied at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. He also participated in the ‘Rupert’ educational programme. His work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, the Contemporary Art Centre, the ‘Vartai’ Gallery, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Tromsø Kunstforening, as well as other art institutions in Lithuania and abroad. Kovalevskij was one of the initiators of the ‘Young Poor Artists’ collective and directed the project spaces ‘Malonioji 6’ and ‘Sodų 4’ of the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association in Vilnius. He also founded the mobile art space ‘InTheCloset’.
The exhibition Margins. Miracles is a landmark in Kovalevskij’s career – the artist’s matured artistic idiom, his curatorial mentality and personal story have come together to produce a powerfully ambitious interdisciplinary project presented by the national art institution.
The rights of LGBTQIA+ community in Lithuania remain subject to intense public and political debate. Homosexual relations were decriminalized in 1993, but the questions of partnership, family and protection from discrimination still wait for a comprehensive legal settlement. Given this context, the exhibition Margins. Miracles speaks not only about personal experience, but the issues of human rights.
The opening of the exhibition Margins. Miracles takes places on 22 May at 6 pm at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition will run until 13 September 2026.
The exhibition is organised by National Gallery of Art
of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art
The artistic production is financed by Lithuanian Council for Culture
Sponsor OCA
Coordinators: Goda Aksamitauskaitė, Giedrius Gulbinas
Graphic Designer Ugnė Balčiūnaitė
Exhibition Design Producer Mindaugas Reklaitis
Copy-editor Emma Stirling
Acknowledgements: William A. F. Bentsen, Anouk De Clercq, Tomas Kirša, Svetlana Kovalevskaja, Erwin De Muer, Greta Vileikytė
The exhibition is organised by Lithuanian National Museum of Art National Gallery of Art
The artistic production is financed by Lithuanian Council for Culture
Sponsor OCA
Coordinators: Goda Aksamitauskaitė, Giedrius Gulbinas
Graphic Designer Ugnė Balčiūnaitė
Exhibition Design Producer Mindaugas Reklaitis
Copy-editor Emma Stirling
Acknowledgements: William A. F. Bentsen, Anouk De Clercq, Tomas Kirša, Svetlana Kovalevskaja, Erwin De Muer, Greta Vileikytė
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