Aurelija Maknytė’s exhibition ‘Channels’ at the National Gallery of Art

On 24 July at 6 pm, the exhibition ‘Channels’ by Aurelija Maknytė will open in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Art (NGA Konstitucijos Ave. 22, Vilnius), part of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA). 

‘The National Gallery of Art is pleased to present a major survey of Aurelija Maknytė’s work. Although many of her works have been shown in different exhibitions over the years, this exhibition marks the first opportunity to engage with the artist’s practice as a distinctive and coherent whole. Bringing together key works from across her career, it reveals the conceptual and thematic continuities that define Maknytė’s singular artistic language. Set within the unexpectedly light-filled spaces of the National Gallery of Art, the exhibition invites visitors to activate their imagination and memory, and to develop their own relationships with the works’, Dr Lolita Jablonskienė, director of the National Gallery of Art points out.     

This exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work, surveying an artistic practice spanning nearly three decades and showcasing both well-known pieces and works that have rarely, if ever, been exhibited before. 

‘For me, making art is a way of life and a way of creating a relationship with the world. I believe that this relationship is driven by curiosity, which continually rewards me with new discoveries. An exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to share these discoveries with visitors and inspire them to look at the world with a sense of wonder and an open mind’, says the artist. 

Maknytė is one of the most distinctive figures in Lithuanian contemporary art. Her creative pra-ctice constantly intertwines the histories of everyday life, nature, and technologies. Although her works emerge from daily observation, collecting, documentation, and years of research, they ra-rely result in finished exhibits. Incompleteness, process, and the opportunity to continually re-think accumulated material are among the key principles of Maknytė’s work. 

Television and television sets constitute an equally important part of Maknytė’s body of work. For over a decade, the artist amassed a personal television archive, recording excerpts of televi-sion programmes and films onto VHS tapes and using them to create video works, fictional auto-biographies, and new narratives. For her, television was not merely a source of imagery, but also a form of cultural memory.  

Nature plays a pivotal role in the exhibition. Observations of plants, animals, and the landscape, conducted over many years on the plot of land by the Širvinta River that the artist calls ‘Earth’, become an integral part of her creative work. Objects derived from the natural environment are displayed in the courtyard of the NGA, while a replica of the Main Hall has sprung up on the banks of the Širvinta River especially for the exhibition. 

Aurelija Maknytė (b. 1969) is a Lithuanian artist living between Vilnius and the Širvintos district. In the early 1990s, she studied design at the Telšiai Higher School of Applied Arts and later completed the then-newly established Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in Photography and Media Art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Maknytė has participated in exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Centre, the National Gallery of Art, MO Museum, the Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre, and the Sodų 4 project space, among others. She has held solo exhibitions at Artifex Gallery, Gallery 101, and Vilnius Town Hall. Her works are held in the collections of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and MO Museum.