We would like to present a new publication by two artists created from fragments of their letters to each other during the pandemic.
Artists Shani Leseman (NL) and Saulė Noreikaitė (LT) have been collaborating on this project since February 2021. “Correspondence” grew out of artists’ prior collaborations and the current lockdown situation which asked to find new and/or different ways of working together and keeping in touch while working in different countries. The artists have challenged themselves to write a letter to each other and send it by post weekly for at least three months, while not communicating in any other way.
During their correspondence they stumbled upon several challenges to keep the conversation going, like delay of post service, lack of stamps and forgetting what one wrote in a letter before. Despite those challenges, through very personal and diary like letters, they found some reoccurring themes which then functioned as a beginning for the outcome of this project: a drawing-based publication in the form of a letter.
The publication consists of two parts, a digital and a printed version.
You can access the digital content via this link: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_l6d5wYU=/ [1]
where a glimpse into the process is to be seen, and the riso-printed letter publication (edition of 51) can be found in four locations from now on:
in Lithuania (1) at Kaunas Artist House reading room [2], and (2) “Sixchairsbooks” [3] bookshop in Vilnius, in the Netherlands at (3) “Stroom Den Haag library [4]” in The Hague and (4) Page not found bookshop [5] in The Hague.
Saulė Noreikaitė is an interdisciplinary artist working between the fields of visual arts and dance, her interest lays in the physical aspect of the human body, its ability and capability to heal, and the way contemporary human-being takes care of ones’ own body. More of her work can be seen here: www.saulenoreikaite.com [6] .
Shani Leseman is a visual artist. Her work touches on subjects like magic, mysticism, and folklore. Her work mainly consists out of drawings, paintings, and ceramic objects, which function as visual explorations of an ongoing personal research. More of her work can be found here: www.shanileseman.nl [7] .
Previous artists’ collaboration was presented in the Studium P gallery in 2016, documentation of this exhibition can be found here: https://saule.hotglue.me/?step+this+way+please+sir+madam [8]
Publication is printed at: Handsonpress [9]
This project is supported by Lithuanian Council of Culture.