Ignas Krunglevičius, Interrogation (installation detail), 2009
Juliana Engberg, the artistic Director of the 19th Biennale of Sydney, revealed the list of participating artists for the Asia Pacific’s largest contemporary visual arts event taking place in Sydney next year.
The list of artists comprises of more than 90 artists from 31 countries among which are two Lithuanian names, Eglė Budvytytė, currently participating at the WIELS Residency Program in Brussels and Ignas Krunglevičius, currently living and working in Oslo.
Ignas Krunglevičius was born in 1979 in Kaunas in Lithuania. In 2010 he graduated in Composition from the Norwegian Academy of Music (Norges Musikkhøyskole). Solo exhibitions of his work include ‘DERIVATIVES’, House of Foundation, Moss (2013); ‘ATTRIBUTION’, Oslo Kunstforening (2011); and “I know who you are, I know what you do”, Podium, Oslo, 2012. Krunglevicius has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and music festivals, including Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Oslo (2013), Oslo Contemporary Music Festival Ultima (2011), and was nominated for Nam June Paik Award in 2010. In 2009, Krunglevičius was the recipient of the Sparebankstiftelsen DnB NOR Stipendutstilling Art Prize and participated in the 26th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival in 2009, where he received an honorary mention.
Sydney Biennial will be featuring his work Interrogation, produced in 2009. The video installation is based on an actual transcript of a police interrogation. The dialog is presented as animated text on two wall projections: one with the police officers questions and the other with the answers of the suspect. A load harshly pulsating electronic soundtrack parallels the interrogation method used in this specific case, victimizing the suspect and at the same time objectifying the viewer: we become active witnesses to the act. By staging an interrogation the work exposes the mechanisms of social crime. Interrogation tries to reflect over voyeurism and the mass paranoia of violence today.
Eglė Budvytytė (b.1981 Lithuania lives and works in Amsterdam) obtained a BA in Media Arts and Photography from Vilnius Art Academy, Lithuania, a BA from the Audio Visual Department at Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and in 2008 an MA from the Fine Art Department at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. At the moment Budvytytė is working on her new project at the residency at WIELS Contemporary Centre for Arts in Brussels.
Eglė Budvytytė’s work has appeared in a number of exhibitions internationally, including ‘(Entre)Ouverture’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); ‘Mindaugas Triennial’, 11th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Vilnius (2012); ‘Beyond Imagination’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2012); ‘Magicians’, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2011); ‘A Cidade do homem nu’, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo (2010); ‘My Travels with Barry’, TENT, Rotterdam (2008); and ‘If We Can’t Get It Together’, The Power Plant, Toronto (2008).
It is not the first time Lithuanian artists are participating in Sydney Biennial. In Biennial edition of year 2008 Lithuanian artist Darius Mikšys showed his work Parents Meeting where artists’ parents were invited to meet the Artistic Director of the Biennial, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
