Artifex is a Vilnius Academy of Arts – affiliated gallery and studio in Vilnius, Lithuania, with a focus on contemporary textile, broadly-interpreted. It frequently features exhibitions by the Academy’s staff and students as well as prominent international artists, collective exhibitions and collaborations. Its intimate 36 square meter space at the heart of the city’s old town often hosts cultural events and participates in the public life of the city’s artistic scene.
The Latin word artifex has been chosen as a title for the gallery to reflect a notion of an artist as a conceptual generator and initiator of ideas on one hand, but also as a craftsman and master of his/her trade on the other. In such disposition, it emphasises the inclination for a dialogue between new artistic ideas and learned craftsmanship, mastery and brilliance in effort to transcend the mainstream division of the two.
At the same time, it critically debates with both notions in search for new forms of creative expression. The guiding object at the core of the gallery’s focus lays materiality in all its reflexive and physical forms. It welcomes projects that engage with the topic in a variety of ways: from sound to cloth, from object to text, from thought to action. In doing so, Artifex seeks the re-discovery of textile under new and creative terms and in unexpected and ever-changing circumstances.
